
Glass I""' K ■■> - , 

Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



\ 



English Literature, 



CONSIDERED AS AN INTERPRETER 



OF 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 



DESIGNED AS A 

Haintal of psiruction. 

BY 

v./- HENRY COPPEE, LL.D, 

~ / f PRESIDENT OF THE LEHIGH UNIVERSITY. 



The Eoman Epic abounds in moral and poetical defects ; nevertlieless it remains 
the most complete picture of the national mind at its highest elevation, the 
most precious document of national history, if the history of an age is revealed 
in its ideas, no less than in its events and incidents. — Kev. C. Merivale. 

History of the Romans under the Empire, c. ili. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER. 

1873. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



STEREOTYPED BY J. PAGAN k SON, PHILADELPHIA, 



PREFACE. 



IT is not the purpose of the author to add another to the many 
vohimes containing a chronological list of English authors, 
with brief comments upon each. Such a statement of works, ar- 
ranged according to periods, or reigns of English monarchs, is 
valuable only as an abridged dictionary of names and dates. Nor 
is there any logical pertinence in clustering contemporary names 
about a principal author, however illustrious he may be. The ob- 
ject of this work is to present prominently the historic connections 
and teachings of English literature ; to place great authors in im- 
mediate relations with great events in history ; and thus to propose 
an important principle to students in all their reading. Thus it is 
that Literature and History are reciprocal : they combine to make 
eras. 

Merely to establish this historic principle, it would have been 
sufficient to consider the greatest authors, such as Chaucer, Spen- 
ser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope; but it occurred to me, 
while keeping this principle before me, to give also a connected 
view of the course of English literature, which might, in an aca- 
demic curriculum, show students how and what to read for them- 
selves. Any attempt beyond this in so condensed a work must 
prove a failure, and so it may well happen triat some readers will 
fail to find a full notice, or even a mention, of some favorite author. 

English literature can only be studied in the writings of the au- 
thors here only mentioned ; but I hope that the work will be found 
to contain suggestions for making such extended reading profitable ; 
and that teachers will find it valuable as a syllabus for fuller courses 
of lectures. 

To those who would like to find information as to the best edi- 
tions of the authors mentioned, I can only say that I at first in- 
tended and began to note editions : I soon saw that I could not do 
this with any degree of uniformity, and therefore determined to 
refer all who desire this bibliographic assistance, to The Dictionary 



IV PREFACE. 

of Authors, by my friend S. Austin Allibone, LL.D., in which bib- 
liography is a strong feature. I am not called upon to eulogize 
that noble work, but I cannot help saying that I have found it in- 
valuable, and that whether mentioned or not, no writer can treat 
of English authors without constant recurrence to its accurate col- 
umns : it is a literary marvel of our age. 

It will be observed that the remoter periods of the literature are 
those in which the historic teachings are the most distinctly visible ; 
we see them from a vantage ground, in their full scope, and in the 
interrelations of their parts. Although in the more modern periods 
the number of writers is greatly increased, we are too near to discern 
the entire period, and are in danger of becoming partisans, by 
reason of our limited view. Especially is this true of the age in 
which we live. Contemporary history is but party-chronicle : the 
true philosophic history can only be written when distance and 
elevation give due scope to our vision. 

The principle I have laid down is best illustrated by the great 
literary masters. Those of less degree have been treated at less 
length, and many of them will be found in the smaller print, to 
save space. Those who study the book should study the small 
print as carefully as the other. 

After a somewhat elaborate exposition of English literature, I 
could not induce myself to tack on an inadequate chapter on 
American literature ; and, besides, I think that to treat the two 
subjects in one volume would be as incongruous as to write a joint 
biography of Marlborough and Washington. American literature 
is too great and noble, and has had too marvelous a development 
to be made an appendix to English literature. 

If time shall serve, I hope to prepare a separate volume, exhibit- 
ing the stages of our literature in the Colonial period, the Revolu- 
tionary epoch, the time of Constitutional establishment, and the 
present period. It will be found to illustrate these historical divi- 
sions in a remarkable manner. H. C. 

The Lehigh University, October, 1872. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Alphabetical Index of Authors 485 

CHAPTER I. 

THE HISTORICAL SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT. 

Literature and Science — English Literature — General Principle — 
Celts and Cymiy — Roman Conquest — Coming of the Saxons — 
Danish Invasions — The Norman Conquest — Changes in Lan- 
guage 13 

CHAPTER H. 

LITERATURE A TEACHER OF HISTORY. CELTIC REMAfNS. 

The Uses of Literature — Italy, France, England — Purpose of the 
Work — Celtic Literary Remains — Druids and Druidism — 
Roman Writers — Psalter of Cashel — Welsh Triads and Ma- 
binogion — Gildas and St. Colm . . . . . . .22 

CHAPTER HI. 

ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE AND HISTORY. 

The Lineage of the Anglo-Saxon — Earliest Saxon Poem — Metrical 
Arrangement — Periphi'asis and Alliteration — Beowulf — Caed- 
mon — Other Saxon Fragments — The Appearance of Bede . 30 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE VENERABLE BEDE AND THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 

Biogi-aphy — Ecclesiastical History — The Recorded Miracles — 
Bede's Latin — Other Writers — The Anglo - Saxon Chronicle : 
its Value — Alfred the Great — Effect of the Danish Invasions . 37 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST AND ITS EARLIEST LITERATURE. 

PAGE 

Norman Rule — Its Oppression — Its Benefits — William of 
Malmesbury — Geoffrey of Monmouth — Other Latin Chron- 
icles — Anglo-Norman Poets — Richard Wace — Other Poets . 45 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE MORNING TWILIGHT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Semi-Saxon Literature — Layamon — The Ormulum — Robert of 
Gloucester — Langland. Piei's Plowman — Piers Plowman's 
Creed — Sir Jean Froissart — Sir John Mandevil . . . .53 

CHAPTER Vn. 

CHAUCER, AND THE EARLY REFORMATION. 

A New Era : Chaucer — Italian Influence — Chaucer as a Founder 
— Earlier Poems — The Canterbury Tales — Characters — Sa- 
tire — Presentations of Woman — The Plan Proposed . . .60 

CHAPTER Vni. 

CHAUCER (continued). REFORMS IN RELIGION AND 

SOCIETY. 

Historical Facts — Reform in Religion — The Clergy, Regular and 
Secular — The Friar and the Sompnour — The Pardonere — 
The Poure Persone — John Wiclif — The Translation of the 
Bible — The Ashes of Wiclif 70 

CHAPTER IX. 

CHAUCER (continued). — PROGRESS OF SOCIETY, AND OF 
LANGUAGE. 

Social Life — Government — Chaucer's English — His Death — 
Historical Facts — John Gower — Chaucer and Gower — Gower's 
Language — Other Writers 81 



CONTENTS. Vll 

CHAPTER X. 

THE BARREN PERIOD BET\YEEN CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

PAGE 

Greek Literature — Invention of Printing. Caxton — Contem- 
porary History — Skelton — Wyatt — Surrey — Sir Tliomas 
Moore — Utopia, and other Works — Other Writers . . • 91 

CHAPTER XI. 

SPENSER AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. 

The Great Change — Edward YI. and Mary — Sidney — The 
Arcadia — Defence of Poesy — Astrophel and Stella — Gabriel 
Harvey — Edmund Spenser : Shepherd's Calendar — His Great 
Work 104 

CHAPTER Xn. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE OUEENE. 

The Faerie Queen e — The Plan Proposed — Illustrations of the 
History — The Knight and the Lady — The Wood of Error and 
the Hermitage — The Crusades — Britomartis and Sir Artegal — 
Elizabeth — Mary Queen of Scots — Other Works — Spenser's 
Fate — Other Writers 1 14 

CHAPTER Xni. 

THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 

Origin of the Drama — ^Miracle Plays — T^Ioralities — First Comedy 
— Early Tragedies — Christopher Marlowe — Other Dramatists — 
Playwrights and ]\Iorals . . . . . . . .128 

CHAPTER XIV. 

^YILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 

The Power of Shakspeare — Meagre Early History — Doubts of 
his Identity — What is known — Marries and goes to London — 
" Venus " and " Lucrece " — Retirement and Death — Literary 
Habitudes — Variety of the Plays — Table of Dates and Sources 137 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XV. 

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE (cONTINUEd). 

PAGB 

The Grounds of his Fame — Creation of Character — Imagination 
and Fancy — Power of Expression — His Faults — Influence of 
Elizabeth — Sonnets — Ireland and Collier — Concordance — 
Other Writers 148 

CHAPTER XVI. 

BACON, AND THE RISE OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 

Birth and Early Life — Treatment of Essex — His Appointments — 
His Fall — Writes Philosophy — Magna Instauratio — His De- 
fects — His Fame — His Essays . . . . . . .15^ 

CHAPTER XVn. 

THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 

Early Versions — The Septuagint — The Vulgate — Wiclif; Tyn- 
dale — Coverdale; Cranmer — Geneva; Bishop's Bible — King 
James's Bible — Language of the Bible — Revision . . . 167 

CHAPTER XVni. 

JOHN MILTON, AND THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH. 

Historical Facts — Charles I. — Religious Extremes — Cromwell — • 
Birth and Early Works — Views of Marriage — Other Prose 
Works — Effects of the Restoration — Estimate of his Prose . 174 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE POETRY OF MILTON. 

The Blind Poet — Paradise Lost — Milton and Dante — His 
Faults — Characteristics of the Age — Paradise Regained — 
His Scholarship — His Sonnets — His Death and Fame . . 184 

CHAPTER XX. 

COWLEY, BUTLER, AND WALTON. 

Cowley and Milton — Cowley's Life and Works — His Fame — 
Butler's Career — Hudibras — His Poverty and Death — Izaak 
Walton — The Angler; and Lives — Other Writers . . . 195 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XXI. 

DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS. 

PAGK 

The Court of Charles II. — Dryden's Early Life — The Death of 
Cromwell — The Restoration — Dryden's Tribute — Annus 
Mirabilis — Absalom and Achitophel — The Death of Charles — 
Dryden's Conversion — Dryden's Fall — His Odes . . . 207 

CHAPTER XXn. 

THE RELIGIOUS LITERATURE OF THE GREAT REBEL- 
LION AND OF THE RESTORATION. 

The English Divines — Hall — ChillingsM^orth — Taylor — Fuller 
— Sir T. Browne — Baxter — Fox — Bunyan — South — Other 
Writers . . . . 221 

CHAPTER XXni. 

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION. 

The License of the Age — Dryden — Wycherley — Congreve — 
Vanbrugh — Farquhar — Etherege — Tragedy — Otway — 
Rowe — Lee — Southern . 233 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 

Contemporary History — Birth and Early Life — Essay on Criticism 
— -Rape of the Lock — The Messiah — The Iliad — Value of the 
Translation — The Odyssey — Essay on Man — The Artificial 
School — Estimate of Pope — Other Writers .... 241 

CHAPTER XXV. 

ADDISON, AND THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 

The Character of the Age — Queen Anne — Whigs and Tories — 
George I. — Addison: The Campaign — Sir Roger de Coverley — 
The Club — Addison's Hymns — Person and Literary Character 254 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

STEELE AND SWIFT. 

PAGE 

Sir Richard Steele — Periodicals — The Crisis — His Last Days — 
Jonathan Swift: Poems — The Tale of a Tub — Battle of the 
Books — Pamphlets — M, B. Drapier — Gulliver's Travels — 
Stella and Vanessa — His Character and Death .... 264 

CHAPTER XXVn. 

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 

The Nevi^ Age — Daniel Defoe — Robinson Crusoe — Richardson 

— Pamela, and Other Novels — Fielding — Joseph Andrews — 
Tom Jones — Its Moral — Smollett — Roderick Random — 
Peregrine Pickle 280 

CHAPTER XXVni. 

STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 
The Subjective School — Sterne: Sermons — Tristram Shandy — 
Sentimental Journey — Oliver Goldsmith — Poems : The Vicar 

— Histories, and Other Works — Mackenzie — The Man of 
Feeling 296 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 
The Sceptical Age — David Hume — History of England — Meta- 
physics — ■ Essay on Miracles — Robertson — Histories — Gib- 
bon — The Decline and Fall ....... 309 

CHAPTER XXX. 

SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES. 

Early Life and Career — London — Rambler and Idler — The 
Dictionary — Odier Works — Lives of the Poets — Person and 
Character — Style — Junius ........ 324 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE LITERARY FORGERS IN THE ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 
The Eighteenth Centuiy — James Macpherson — Ossian — Thomas 
Chatterton — His Poems — The Verdict — Suicide — The 
Cause 334 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 

PAGE 

The Transition Period — James Thomson — The Seasons — The 
Castle of Indolence — Mark Akenside — Pleasures of the Im- 
agination — Thomas Gray — The Elegy. The Bard — William 
Cowper — The Task — Translation of Homer — Other Writers 347 

CHAPTER XXXni. 

THE LATER DRAMA. 

The Progress of the Drama — Garrick — Foote — Cumberland — 
Sheridan — George Colman — George Colman, the Younger — 
Other Dramatists and Humorists — Other Writers on Various 
Subjects 360 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY : SCOTT. 

Walter Scott — Translations and Minstrelsy — The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel — Other Poems — The W^averley Novels — Particular 
Mention — Pecuniary Troubles — His Manly Purpose — Powers 
Overtasked — Fruitless Journey — Return and Death — His Fame 37 1 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY I BYRON AND MOORE. 

Early Life of Byron — Childe Harold and Eastern Tales — Unhappy 
Marriage — Philhellenism and Death — Estimate of his Poetry — 
Thomas Moore — Anacreon — Later Fortunes — Lalla Rookh — 
His Diary — His Rank as Poet 384 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (CONTINUED). 

Robert Bums — His Poems — His Career — George Crabbe — 
Thomas Campbell — Samuel Rogers — P, B. Shelley — John Keats 
— Other Writers 397 



Xll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 

PAGE 

The New School — William Wordsworth — Poetical Canons — The 
Excursion and Sonnets — An Estimate — Robert Southey — His 
Writings — Historical Value — S. T. Coleridge — Early Life — 
His Helplessness — Hartley and H, N. Coleridge . . . 414 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE REACTION IN POETRY. 

Alfred Tennyson — Early Works — The Princess — Idyls of the 
King — Elizabeth B. Browning — Aurora Leigh — Her Faults 
— Robert Browning — Other Poets 428 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE LATER HISTORIANS. 

New Materials — George Grote — History of Greece — Lord Ma- 
caulay — History of England — Its Faults — Thomas Carlyle — 
Life of Frederick II. — Other Historians 439 

CHAPTER XL. 

THE LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 

Bulwer — Changes in Writers — Dickens's Novels — American 
Notes — His Varied Powers — Second Visit to America — Thack- 
eray — Vanity Fair — Henry Esmond — The Newcomes — 
The Georges — Estimate of his Powers ..... 450 

CHAPTER XLL 

THE LATER WRITERS. 
Charles Lamb — Thomas Hood — Thomas de Quincey — Other 
Novelists — Writers on Science and Philosophy .... 466 

CHAPTER XLIL 

ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 
Roman News Letters — The Gazette — The Civil War — Later 
Divisions — The Reviews — The Monthlies — The Dailies — 
The London Times — Other Newspapers 475 



English Literature, 



CHAPTER L 

THE HISTORICAL SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT, 



Literature and Science. 
English Literature. 
General Principle. 



Celts and Cymr>^. 
Roman Conquest. 
Coming of the Saxons. 



Danish Invasions. 
The Norman Conquest. 
Changes in Language. 



Literature and Science, 

THERE are two words in the English language which 
are now used to express the two great divisions of rnen- 
tal production — Science and Literature; and yet, from their 
etymology, they have so much in toramon, that it has been 
necessary to attach to each a technical meaning, in order that 
we may employ them without confusion. 

Science^ from, the participle sciens, of svio, scire, to know, 
would seem to comprise all that can be known — what the 
Latins called the omne scibile, or all-knowable. 

Literature is from litera, a letter, and probably at one re- 
move from li?io, iitum, to anoint or besmear, because in the 
earlier tim.es a tablet was smeared with wax, and letters were 
traced upon it with a graver. Literature, in its first mean- 
ing, would, therefore, comprise all that can be conveyed by 
the use of letters. 

But language is impatient of retaining two words which 
convey the same meaning ; and although science had at first 

2 13 



14 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

to do with the fact of knowing and the conditions of knowl- 
edge in the abstract, while literature meant the written rec- 
ord of such knowledge, a far more distinct sphere has been 
given to each in later times, and special functions assigned 
them. 

In general terms, Science now means any branch of knowl- 
edge in which men search for principles reaching back to the 
ultimate, or for facts which establish these principles, or are 
cla-ssified by them in a logical order. Thus we speak of the 
mathematical, physical, metaphysical, and moral sciences. 

Literature, which is of later development as at present 
used, comprises those subjects which have a relation to human 
life and human nature through the power of the imagination 
and the fancy. Technically, literature includes history^ poetry, 
oratory, the drama, and works of fiction, and critical produc- 
tions upon any of these as themes. 

Such, at least, will be a sufficiently exact division for our 
purpose, although the student will find them overlapping each 
other's domain occasionally, interchanging functions, and re- 
ciprocally serving for each other's advantage. Thus it is no 
confusion of terms to speak of the poetry of science and of 
the science of poetry ; and thus the great functions of the 
human mind, although scientifically distinct, co-operate in 
harmonious and reciprocal relations in their diverse and mani- 
fold productions. 

English Literature. — English Literature may then be 
considered as comprising the progressive productions of the 
English mind in the paths of imagination and taste, and is to 
be studied in the v/orks of the poets, historians, dramatists, 
essayists, and romancers — a long line of brilliant names from 
the origin of the language to the present day. 

To the general reader all that is profitable in this study 
dates from the appearance of Chaucer, who has been justly 
styled the Father of English Poetry ; and Chaucer even re- 



HISTORICAL SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT. 1$ 

quires a glossary, as a considerable portion of his vocabulary 
has become obsolete and much of it has been modified ; but 
for the student of English literature, who wishes to understand 
its philosophy and its historic relations, it becomes necessary 
to ascend to a more remote period, in order to find the origin 
of the language in which Chaucer wrote, and the effect pro- 
duced upon him by any antecedent literary works, in the 
root-languages from which the English has sprung. 

General Principle. — It may be stated, as a general prin- 
ciple, that to understand a nation's literature, we must study 
the history of the people and of their language ; the geography 
of the countries from w^hich they came, as well as that in 
which they live ; the concurrent historic causes which have 
conspired to form and influence the literature. We shall find, 
as we advance in this study, that the life and literature of a 
people are reciprocally reflective. 

I. Celts and Cymry. — Thus, in undertaking the study of 
English literature, we must begin with the history of the Celts 
and Cymry, the first inhabitants of the British Islands of 
whom we have any record, who had come from Asia in the 
first great wave of western migration ; a rude, aboriginal peo- 
ple, whose languages, at the beginning of the Christian era, 
were included in one family, the Celtic, comprising the Brit- 
ish or Cambj'ian, and the Gadhelic classes. In process of 
time these were subdivided thus : 
The British into 

Welsh, Sit present spoken in Wales. 

Cornish, extinct only within a century. 

Ai'inorican, Bas Breton, spoken in French Brittany. 
The Gadhelic into 

Gaelic, still spoken in the Scottish Highlands. 

Irish, or Erse, spoken in Ireland. 

Manx, spoken in the Isle of Man. 



l6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Such are the first people and dialects to be considered as 
the antecedent occupants of the country in which English lit- 
erature was to have its birth, 

II. Roman Conquest. — But these Celtic peoples were 
conquered by the Romans under Caesar and his successors, 
and kept in a state of servile thraldom for four hundred 
and fifty years. There was but little amalgamation between 
them and their military masters. Britain was a most valuable 
northern outpost of the Roman Empire, and was occupied 
by large garrisons, which employed the people in hard labors, 
and used them for R.oman aggrandizement, but despised 
them too much to attempt to elevate their condition. Else- 
where the Romans depopulated, where they met with barba- 
rian resistance ; they made a solitude and called it peace — for 
which they gave a triumph and a cognomen to the conqueror; 
but in Britain, although harassed and endangered by the in- 
surrections of the natives, they bore with them ; they built 
fine cities like London and York, originally military out- 
posts, and transformed much of the country between the 
Channel and the Tweed from pathless forest into a civilized 
residence, 

III. Coming of the Saxons. — Compelled by the increas- 
ing dangers and troubles immediately around the city of 
Rome to abandon their distant dependencies, the Roman 
legions evacuated Britain, and left the people, who had be- 
come enervated, spiritless, and unaccustomed to the use of 
arms, a prey to their fierce neighbors, both from Scotland and 
from the continent. 

The Saxons had already made frequent incursions into 
Britain, while rival Roman chieftains were contesting for pre- 
eminence, and, as early as the third century, had become so 
troublesome that the Roman emperors were obliged to ap- 



HISTORICAL SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT. 1/ 

point a general to defend the eastern coast, known as comes 
litoris Saxonici, or count of the Saxon shore. ^ 

These Saxons, who had already tested the goodliness of the 
land, came when the Romans departed, under the specious 
guise of protectors of the Britons against the inroads of the 
Picts and Scots ; but in reality to possess themselves of the 
country. This was a true conquest of race — Teutons over- 
running Celts. They came first in reconnoitring bands ; 
then in large numbers, not simply to garrison, as the Romans 
had done, but to occupy permanently. From the less at- 
tractive seats of Friesland and the basin of the Weser, they 
came to establish themselves in a charming country, already 
reclaimed from barbarism, to enslave or destroy the inhab- 
itants, and to introduce their language, religion, and social 
institutions. They came as a confederated people of German 
race — Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and Frisians;^ but, as far as 
the results of their conquest are concerned, there was entire 
unity among them. 

The Celts, for a brief period protected by them from their 
fierce northern neighbors, were soon enslaved and oppressed : 
those who resisted were driven slowly to the Welsh moun- 
tains, or into Cornwall, or across the Channel into French 
Brittany. Great numbers were destroyed. They left few 
traces of their institutions and their language. Thus the 
Saxon was established in its strength, and has since remained 
the strongest element of English ethnography. 

IV. Danish Invasions. — But Saxon Britain was also to 
suffer from continental incursions. The Scandinavians — in- 
habitants of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark — impelled by 
the same spirit of piratical adventure which had actuated the 

1 His jurisdiction extended from Norfolk around to Sussex. 

2 This is the usually accepted division of tribes; but Dr. Latham 
denies that the Jutes, or inhabitants of Jutland, shared in the invasion. 
The difficult question does not affect the scope of our inquiry. 

2* B 



l8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Saxons, began to leave their homes for foreign conquest. 
*' Impatient of a bleak climate and narrow limits, they started 
from the banquet, grasped their arms, sounded their horn, 
ascended their ships, and explored every coast that promised 
either spoil or settlement."^ To England they came as 
Danes; to France, as Northmen or Normans. They took 
advantage of the Saxon wars with the British, of Saxon na- 
tional feuds, and of that enervation which luxurious living 
had induced in the Saxon kings of the octarchy, and suc- 
ceeded in occupying a large portion of the north and east of 
England ; and they have exerted in language, in physical 
type, and in manners a far greater influence than has been 
usually conceded. Indeed, the Danish chapter in English 
history has not yet been fairly written. They were men of a 
singularly bold and adventurous spirit, as is evinced by their 
voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and thence to the Atlantic 
coast of North America, as early as the tenth and eleventh 
centuries. It is more directly to our purpose to observe their 
character as it is displayed in their conquest of the Frankish 
kingdom of Neustria, in their facile reception and ready as- 
similation of the Roman language and arts which they found 
in Gaul, and in their forcible occupancy, under William the 
Conqueror, of Saxon England, in 1066. 

V. The Norman Conquest. — The vigor of the Normans 
had been trained, but not weakened by their culture in Nor- 
mandy. They maintained their supremacy in arms against 
the efforts of the kings of France. They had long cultivated 
intimate relations with England, and their dukes had long 
hankered for its possession. William, the natural son of 
Duke Robert — known to history and musical romance as 
Robert le Diable — was a man of strong mind, tenacious pur- 
pose, and powerful hand. He had obtained, by promise of 
Edward the Confessor, the reversion of the crown upon the 

^ Gibbon's Decline and Fall, c. Iv. 



HISTORICAL SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT. I9 

death of that monarch ; and when the issue came, he availed 
himself of that reversion and the Pope's sanction, and also of 
the disputed succession between Harold, the son of Godwin, 
and the true Saxon heir, Edgar Atheling, to make good his 
claim by force of arms. 

Under him the Normans were united, while divisions ex- 
isted in the Saxon ranks. Tostig, the brother of Harold, and 
Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, combined against 
Harold, and, just before the landing of Duke William at Pe- 
vensey, on the coast of Sussex, Harold was obliged to march 
rapidly northward to Stanford bridge, to defeat Tostig and 
the Norwegians, and then to return with a tired army of un- 
certain mo7'ale, to encounter the invading Normans. Thus it 
appears that William conquered the land, which would have 
been invincible had the leaders and the people been united 
in its defence. 

As the Saxons, Danes, and Normans were of the same great 
Teutonic family, however modified by the different circum- 
stances of movement and residence, there was no new ethnic 
element introduced ; and, paradoxical as it may seem, the 
fusion of these peoples was of great benefit, in the end, to 
England. Though the Saxons at first suffered from Norman 
oppression, the kingdom was brought into large inter-Euro- 
pean relations, and a far better literary culture was introduced, 
more varied in subject, more developed in point of language, 
and more artistic. 

Thus much, in a brief historical summary, is necessary as 
an introduction to our subject. From all these contests and 
conquests there were wrought in the language of the country 
important changes, which are to be studied in the standard 
works of its literature. 

Changes in Language. — The changes and transforma- 
tions of language may be thus briefly stated : — In the Celtic 
period, before the arrival of the Romans, the people spoke 



20 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

different dialects of the Celtic and Gadhelic languages, all 
cognate and radically similar. 

These were not much affected by the occupancy of the Ro- 
mans for about four hundred and fifty years, although, doubt- 
less, Latin words, expressive of things and notions of which 
the British had no previous knowledge, were adopted by 
them, and many of the Celtic inhabitants who submitted to 
these conquerors learned and used the Latin language. 

When the Romans departed, and the Saxons came in num- 
bers, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Saxon language, 
which is the foundation of English, became the current 
speech of the realm ; adopting few Celtic words, but retaining 
a considerable number of the Celtic names of places, as it 
also did of Latin terminations in names. 

Before the coming of the Normans, their language, called 
the Langue iV oil, or Norman French, had been very much 
favored by educated Englishmen; and when William con- 
quered England, he tried to supplant the Saxon entirely. In 
this he was not successful ; but the two languages were inter- 
fused and amalgamated, so that in the middle of the twelfth 
century, there had been thus created the English language, 
formed but still formative. The Anglo-Saxon was the found- 
ation, or basis ; while the Norman French is observed to be 
the principal modifying element. 

Since the Norman conquest, numerous other elements have 
entered, most of them quietly, without the concomitant of 
political revolution or foreign invasion. 

Thus the Latin, being used by the Church, and being the 
language of literary and scientific comity throughout the 
world, v/as constantly adding words and modes of expression 
to the English. The introduction of Greek into Western 
Europe, at the fall of Constantinople, supplied Greek words, 
and induced a habit of coining English words from the 
Greek. The establishment of the Hanoverian succession, 
after the fall of the Stuarts, brought in the practice and study 



HISTORICAL SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT.* 21 

of German, and somewhat of its phraseology ; and English 
conquests in the East have not failed to introduce Indian 
words, and, what is far better, to open the way for a fuller 
study of comparative philology and linguistics. 

In a later chapter we shall reconsider the periods referred 
to, in an examination of the literary works which they con- 
tain, works produced by historical causes, and illustrative of 
historical events. 



CHAPTER II. 

LITERATURE A TEACHER OF HISTORY. CELTIC REMAINS. 

The Uses of Literature, i Celtic Literary' Remains. i -Psalter of Cashel. [gion. 
Italj', France, England. Druids and Dniidism. Welsh Triads and Mabino- 

Purpose of the Work. I Roman Writers. I Gildas and St. Colm. 

The Uses of Literature. 

BEFORE examining these periods in order to find the 
literature produced in them, it will be well to consider 
briefly what are the practical uses of literature, and to set 
forth, as a theme, that particular utility which it is the object 
of these pages to inculcate and apply. 

The uses of literature are manifold. Its study gives whole- 
some food to the mind, making it strong and systematic. It 
cultivates and delights the imagination and the taste of men. 
It refines society by elevating the thoughts and aspirations 
above what is sensual and sordid, and by checking.the grosser 
passions ; it makes up, in part, that '' multiplication of agree- 
able consciousness" which Dr. Johnson calls happiness. Its 
adaptations in religion, in statesmanship, in legislative and 
judicial inquiry, are productive of noble and beneficent re- 
sults. History shows us, that while it has given to the indi- 
vidual man, in all ages, contemplative habits, and high moral 
tone, it has thus also been a powerful instrument in producing 
the brilliant civilization of mighty empires. 

A Teacher of History. — But apart from these its sub- 
jective benefits, it has its highest and most practical utility as 
a TEACHER of HISTORY. Ballads, more powerful than laws, 



LITERATURE A TEACHER OF HISTORY. 23 

shouted forth from a nation's hearty have been in part the 
achievers, and afterward the victorious hymns, of its new-born 
freedom, and have been also used in after ages to reinspire 
the people with the spirit of their ancestors. Immortal epics 
not only present magnificent displays of heroism for imita- 
tion, but, like the Iliad and Odyssey, still teach the theog- 
ony, national policy, and social history of a people, after the 
Bema has long been silent, the temples in ruin, and the groves 
prostrate under the axe of repeated conquests. 

Satires have at once exhibited and scourged social faults 
and national follies, and remained to after times as most es- 
sential materials for history. 

Indeed, it was a quaint but just assertion of Hare, in his 
'' Guesses at Truth," that in Greek history there is nothing 
truer than Herodotus except Homer. 

Italy and France. — Passing by the classic periods, which 
afford abundant illustration of the position, it would be easy 
to exhibit the clear and direct historic teachings in purely 
literary works, by a reference to the literature of Italy and 
France. The history of the age of the Guelphs and Ghibel- 
lines is clearly revealed in the vision of Dante : the times of 
Louis XIV. are amply illustrated by the pulpit of Massillon, 
Bourdaloue, and Bridaine, and by the drama of Corneille, 
Racine, and Aloliere. 

English Literature the best Illustration. — But in 
seeking for an illustration of the position that literature is em- 
inently a teacher and interpreter of history, we are fortunate 
in finding none more striking than that presented by English 
literature itself. All the great events of English history find 
complete correspondent delineation in English literature, so 
that, were the purely historical record lost, we should have in 
the works of poetry, fiction, and the drama, correct portrait- 
ures of the character, habits, manners and customs, political 
sentiments, and modes and forms of religious belief among the 



24 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

English people ; in a word, the philosophy of English his- 
tory. 

In the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dryden, 
and Addison, are to be found the men and women, kings, 
nobles, and commons, descriptions of English nature, hints 
of the progress of science and advancement in art; the con- 
duct of government, the force of prevailing fashions — in a 
word, the moving life of the time, and not its dry historic 
record. 

"Authors," says the elder D'Israeli, **are the creators or 
creatures of opinion : the great form the epoch j the many 
reflect the age." Chameleon-like, most of them take the 
political, social, and religious hues of the period in which 
they live, while a few illustrate it perhaps quite as forcibly by 
violent opposition and invective. 

We shall see that in Chaucer's Canferbttry Tales and in 
Gower's Vox Cla77iantis are portrayed the political ferments 
and theological controversies of the reigns of Edward III. 
and Richard II. Spenser decks the history of his age in 
gilded mantle and flowing plumes, in his tribute to Gloriana, 
The Faery Queen, who is none other than Elizabeth herself. 
Literature partakes of the fierce polemic and religious enthu- 
siasm which mark the troublous times of the Civil War ; it be- 
comes tawdry, tinselled, and licentious at the Restoration, and 
develops into numerous classes and more serious instruction, 
under the constitutional reigns of the house of Hanover, in 
which the kings were bad, but the nation prosperous because 
the rights of the people were guaranteed. 

Many of the finest works of English literature are purely 

and directly historical; what has been said is intended to re- 

. fer more particularly to those that are not — the unconscious, 

undesigned teachers of history, such as fiction, poetry, and 

the drama. 

Purpose of the Work. — Such, then, is the purpose of 



CELTIC LITERARY REMAINS. 25 

this volume — to indicate the teachings of history in the 
principal productions of English literature. Only the stand- 
ard authors will be considered, and the student will not be 
overburdened with statistics, which it must be a part of his 
task to collect for himself. And now let us return to the 
early literature embodied in those languages vrhich have pre- 
ceded the English on British soil ; or which, by their com- 
bination, have formed the English language. For, the Eng- 
lish language may be properly compared to a stream, which, 
rising in a feeble source, receives in its seaward flow many 
tributaries, large and small, until it becomes a lordly river. 
The works of English literature may be considered as the ships 
and boats which it bears upon its bosom : near its source the 
craft are small and frail ; as it becomes more navigable, state- 
lier vessels are launched upon it, until, in its majestic and 
lakelike extensions, rich navies ride, freighted with wealth 
and power — the heavy ordnance of defence and attack, the 
products of Eastern looms, the precious metals and jewels 
from distant mines — the best exponents of the strength and 
prosperity of the nation through which flows the river of 
speech, bearing the treasures of mind. 

Celtic Literary Remains. The Druids. — Let us take 
up the consideration of literature in Britain in the order of 
the conquests mentioned in the first chapter. 

We recur to Britain while inhabited by the Celts, both be- 
fore and after the Roman occupation. The extent of influ- 
ence exercised by the Latin language upon the Celtic dialects 
cannot be determined ; it seems to have been slight, and, on 
the other hand, it may be safely assumed that the Celtic did 
not contribute much to the world-absorbing Latin. 

The chief feature, and a very powerful one, of the 
Celtic polity, was Druidism. At its head was a priest- 
hood, not in the present meaning of the word, but in the 



26 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

more extended acceptation which it received in the middle 
ages, when it embraced the whole class of men of letters. 
Although we have very few literary remains, the system, wis- 
dom, and works of the Druids form one of the strong found- 
ation-stones of English literature and of English national 
customs, and should be studied on that account. The Druid 
proper was governor, judge, philosopher, expounder, and ex- 
ecutioner. The ovaidd, or ovafes, were the priests, chiefly con- 
cerned in the study of theology and the practice of religion. 
The bards "were heroic poets of rare lyric power ; they kept 
the national traditions in trust, and claimed the second sight 
and the power of prophecy. Much has been said of their 
human sacrifices in colossal images of wicker-work — the 
^^ im77iani magiiitudine simtdacra^^ of Caesar — which were 
filled with human victims, and which crackled and disap- 
peared in towering flame and columns of smoke, amid the 
loud chantings of the bards. The most that can be said in 
palliation of this custom is, that almost always such a scene 
presented the judicial execution of criminals, invested with 
the solemnities of religion. 

In their theology, Esus, the God Force — the Eternal 
Father — has for his agents the personification of spiritual 
light, of immortality, of nature, and of heroism ; Camul was 
the war-god; Tarann the thunder-god; Heol, the king of 
the sun, who inflames the soldier's heart, and gives vitality 
to the corn and the grape. ^ 

But Druidism, which left its monuments like Stonehenge, 
and its strong traces in English life, now especially found in 
Wales and other mountainous parts of the kingdom, has not 
left any written record. 

Roman Writers. — Of the Roman occupancy we have 
Roman and Greek accounts, many of them by those who 
took part in the doings of the time. Among the principal 

1 H. Martin, Histoire de France, i. 53. 



CELTIC LITERARY REMAINS. 2/ 

writers are Julius Ccesar, Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, 
and Suetonius. 

Psalter of Cashel. — Of the later Celtic efforts, almost 
all are in Latin : the oldest Irish work extant is called the 
Fsalter of Cashel, which is a compilation of the songs of the 
early bards, and of metrical legends, made in the ninth cen- 
tury by Co7'tnac Mac Culinan, who claimed to be King of 
Munster and Bishop of Cashel. 

The Welsh Triads. — The next of the important Celtic 
remains is called The Welsh Triads, an early but pro- 
gressive work of the Cymbric Celts. Some of the triads are 
of very early date, and others of a much later period. The 
work is said to have been compiled in its present form by 
Caradoc of Nantgarvan and Jevan Brecha, in the thirteenth 
century. It contains a record of '' remarkable men and things 
which have been in the island of Britain, and of the events 
which befell the race of the Cymri from the age of. ages," 
i. e. from the beginning. It has also numerous moral pro- 
verbs. It is arranged in triads, or sets of three. 

As an example, we have one triad giving *^The three of 
the race of the island of Britain : Hu Gadarn, (who first 
brought the race into Britain ;) Prydain, (who first established 
regal government,) and Dynwal Moelmud, (who made a sys- 
tem of laws.)" Another triad presents *^The three benevo- 
lent tribes of Britain : the Cymri, (who came with Hu Ga^ 
darn from Constantinople;) the Lolegrwys, (who came from 
the Loire,) and the Brito7is.''^ 

Then are mentioned the tribes that came with consent and 
under protection, viz., the Caledonians, the Gwyddelian race, 
and the men of Galedin, who came from the continent 
*'when their country was drowned;" the last inhabited 
the Isle of Wight. Another mentions the three usurping 
tribes: the Coranied, the Gwydel-Fichti^ (from Denmark,) 



28 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and the Saxons. Although the compilation is so modem, 
most of the triads date from the sixth century. 

The Mabinogion. — Next in order of importance of the 
Celtic remains must be mentioned the Mabinogion, or Tales 
for Youth, a series of romantic tales, illustrative of early British 
life, some of which have been translated from the Celtic into 
English. Among these the most elaborate is the Tale of Pe- 
redur, a regular Romance of Arthur, entirely Welsh in cos- 
tume and character. 

British Bards. — A controversy has been fiercely carried 
on respecting the authenticity of poems ascribed to Aneu- 
rin, Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, and Merdhin, or Merlin, four 
famous British bards of the fifth and sixth centuries, who give 
us the original stories respecting Arthur, representing him not 
as a '' miraculous character," as the later histories do, but as a 
courageous warrior worthy of respect but not of wonder. The 
burden of the evidence, carefully collected and sifted by Sha- 
ron Turner,^ seems to be in favor of the authenticity of these 
poems. 

These works are fragmentary and legendary : they have 
given few elements to the English language, but they show us 
the condition and culture of the British mind in that period, 
and the nature of the people upon whom the Saxons imposed 
their yoke. " The general spirit [of the early British poetry] 
is much more Druidical than Christian,"^ and in its myste- 
rious and legendary nature, while it has been not without 
value as a historical representation of that early period, it has 
offered rare material for romantic poetry from that day to the 
present time. It is on this account especially that these works 
should be studied. 

GiLDAS. — Among the writers wjio must be considered as 
belonging to the Celtic race, although they wrote in Latin, 
the most prominent is Gildas. He was the son of Caw, (Al- 

J Vindication of the Ancient British Poems. 
2 Craik's English Literature, i. 2,1. 



CELTIC LITERARY REMAINS. 29 

cluyd, a British king,) who was also the father of the famous 
bard Aneurin. Many have supposed Gildas and Aneurin to 
be the same person, so vague are the accounts of both. If 
not, they were brothers. Gildas was a British bard, who, 
when converted to Christianity, became a Christian priest, 
and a missionary among his own people. He was born at 
Dumbarton in the middle of the sixth century, and was sur- 
named the Wise. His great work, the History of the Britons, 
is directly historical : his account extends from the first inva- 
sion of Britain down to his own time. 

A true Celt, he is a violent enemy of the Roman con- 
querors first, and then of the Saxon invaders. He speaks of 
the latter as '' the nefarious Saxons, of detestable name, hated 
alike by God and man; ... a band of devils breaking 
forth from the den of the barbarian lioness." 

The history of Gildas, although not of much statistical 
value, sounds a clear Celtic note against all invaders, and dis- 
plays in many parts characteristic outlines of the British people. 

•St. Columbanus. — St. Colm, or Columbanus, who was 
born in 521, was the founder and abbot of a monastery in 
lona, one of the Hebrides, which is also called Icolmkill 
— the Isle of Colm's Cell. The Socrates of that retreat, he 
found his Plato in the person of a successor, St. Adamnan, 
whose ''Vita Sancti Columbae " is an early work of curious 
historical importance. St. Adamnan became abbot in 679. 

A backward glance at the sparse and fragmentary annals 
of the Celtic people, will satisfy us that they have but slight 
claims to an original share in English literature. Some were 
in the Celtic dialects, others in Latin. They have given 
themes, indeed, to later scholars, but have left little trace in 
form and language. The common Celtic words retained in 
English are exceedingly few, although their number has not 
been decided. They form, in some sense, a portion of the foun- 
dation on which the structure of our literature has been erected, 
without being in any manner a part of the building itself. 
3* 



CHAPTER III. 



ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE AND HISTORY. 

The Lineage of the Anglo- | Metrical Arrangement. | Caedmon. 

Saxon. Periphrasis and Alliteration. Other Saxon Fragments. 

Earliest Saxon Poem. ' Beowulf. I The Appearance of Bede. 

The Lineage of the Anglo-Saxon. 

THE true origin of English literature is Saxon. Anglo- 
Saxon is the mother tongue of the English language, 
or, to state its genealogy more distinctly, and to show its 
family relations at a glance, take the following divisions and 
s ibdivisions of the 

Teutonic Class. 
I 



I I _ _ I 

High German branch. Low German branch. Scandinavian branch. 
Dead | Languages. 

! r \ \ i 

Gothic. Old Dutch. Anglo-Saxon. Old Frisian. Old Saxon. 

I 
I English. I 

Without attempting an analysis of English to find the exact 
proportion of Saxon words, it must be observed that Saxon 
is the root-language of English ; it might with propriety be 
called the oldest English; it has been manipulated, modi- 
fied, and developed in its contact with other languages — re- 
maining, however, radically the same — to become our present 
spoken language. 

At this period of our inquiry, we have to do with the Saxon 
itself, premising, however, that it has many elements from 
the Dutch, and that its Scandinavian relations are found in 

3? 



ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE AND HISTORY. 3I 

many Danish words. The progress and modifications jf 
the language in that formative process which made it the 
English, will be mentioned as we proceed in our inquiries. 

In speaking of the Anglo-Saxon literature, we include a 
consideration also of those works written in Latin which are 
products of the times, and bear a part in the progress of the 
people and their literature. They are exponents of the Saxon 
mind, frequently of more value than the vernacular writings. 

Earliest Saxon Poem. — The earliest literary monument 
in the Saxon language is the poem called Beowulf, the author 
and antiquity of which are alike unknown. It is at once a 
romantic legend and an instructive portraiture of the earliest 
Saxon period — "an Anglo-Saxon poetical romance," says 
Sharon Turner, " true in costume and manners, but with an 
invented story." Before proceeding to a consideration of 
this poem, let us look for a moment at some of the charac- 
teristics of Saxon poetry. As to its subject-matter, it is not 
much of a love-song, that sentiment not being one of its chief 
inspirations. The Saxon imagination was inflamed chiefly 
by the religious and the heroic in war. As to its handling, it 
abounded in metaphor and periphrasis, suggestive images, and 
parables instead of direct narrative. 

Metrical Arrangement. — As to metrical arrangement, 
Saxon poetry differed from our modern English as well as 
from the classical models, in that their poets followed no laws 
of metre, but arranged their vernacular verses without any 
distinct rules, but simply to please the ear. "To such a se- 
lection and arrangement of words as produced this effect, they 
added the habit of frequently omitting the usual particles, and 
of conveying their meaning in short and contracted phrases. 
The only artifices they used were those of inversion and trans- 
ition." ^ It is difficult to give examples to those unacquainted 

"^ Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, book ix., c. i. 



32 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

with the language, but the following extract may serve to in- 
dicate our meaning : it is taken from Beowulf : 

Crist waer a cennijd Christ was bom 

Cyninga wuldor King of gloiy 

On midne winter: In mid-winter: 

Msere theoden ! Illustrious King! 

Ece almilitig ! Eternal, Almighty ! 

On thij eahteothan daeg On the eighth day 

Hael end gehaten Saviour was called, 

Heofon ricet theard. Of Heaven's kingdom ruler. 

Periphrasis. — Their periphrasis, or finding figurative 
names for persons and things, is common to the Norse poetry. 
Thus Caedmon, in speaking of the ark, calls it the sea house ^ 
the palace of the ocea?t, the wooden fortress, and by many 
other periphrastic names. 

Alliteration. — The Saxons were fond of alliteration, 
both in prose and verse. They used it without special rules, 
but simply to satisfy their taste for harmony in having many 
words beginning with the same letter; and thus sometimes 
making an arbitrary connection between the sentences or 
clauses in a discourse, e. g. : 

Firum foldan ; The ground for men 

Frea almihtig; Almighty ruler. 

The nearest approach to a rule was that three words in close 
connection should begin with the same letter. The habit of 
ellipsis and transposition is illustrated by the following sen- 
tence in Alfred's prose: ''So doth the moon with his pale 
light, that the bright stars he obscures in the heavens;" 
which he thus renders in poetry : 

With pale light 
Bright stars 
Moon lesseneth. 



ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE AND HISTORY. 33 

With this brief explanation, which is only intended to be 
suggestive to the student, we return to Beowulf. 

The Plot of Beowulf. — The poem contains six thousand 
lines, in which are told the wonderful adventures of the val- 
iant viking Beowulf, who is supposed to have fallen in Jutland 
in the year 340. The Danish king Hrothgar, in whose great 
hall banquet, song, and dance are ever going on, is subjected 
to the stated visits of a giant, Grendel, a descendant of Cain, 
who destroys the Danish knights and people, and against 
whom no protection can be found. 

Beowulf, the hero of the epic, appears. He is a great 
chieftain, the heorth-geneat (hearth-companion, or vassal) of 
a king named Higelac. He assembles his companions, goes 
over the road of the swans (the sea) to Denmark, or Nor- 
way, states his purpose to Hrothgar, and advances to meet 
Grendel. After an indecisive battle with the giant, and a 
fierce struggle with the giant's mother, who attacks him in the 
guise of a sea-wolf, he kills her, and then destroys Grendel. 
Upon the death of Hrothgar he receives his reward in be- 
ing made King of the Danes. 

With this occurrence the original poem ends: it is the 
oldest epic poem in any modern language. At a later day, 
new cantos were added, which, following the fortunes of the 
hero, record at length that he was killed by a dragon. A 
digest and running commentary of the poem maybe found in 
Turner's Anglo-Saxons ; and no one can read it without dis- 
cerning the history shining clearly out of the mists of fable. 
The primitive manners, modes of life, forms of expression, 
are all historically delineated. In it the intimate relations 
between the ki7ig and his people are portrayed. The Saxon 
cyning is compounded of cyn, people, and iiig, a son or de- 
scendant; and this etymology gives the true conditions of 
their rule : they were popular leaders — elected in the witena- 

C 



34 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



gemot on the death of their predecessors/ We observe, too, 
the spirit of adventure — a rude knight-errantry — which 
characterized these northern sea-kings 



— that with such profit 
labor on the wide sea 
amid the contests of the ocean 
there they for riches 



and for deceitful glory 

explore its bays 

in the deep waters 

till they sleep with their elders. 



We may also notice the childish wonder of a rude, primitive, 
but brave people, who magnified a neighboring monarch of 
great skill and strength, or perhaps a malarious fen, into a 
giant, and who were pleased with a poem which caters to that 
heroic mythus which no civilization can root out of the human 
breast, and which gives at once charm and popularity to 
every epic. 

Saedmon. — Next in order, we find the paraphrase of 
Scripture by Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, who died about 
the year 680. The period in which he lived is especially 
marked by the spread of Christianity in Britain, and by a 
religious zeal mingled with the popular superstitions. The 
belief was universal that holy men had the power to work mir- 
acles. The Bible in its entire canon was known to few even 
among the ecclesiastics : treasure-house as it was to the more 
studious clerics, it was almost a sealed book to the common 
people. It would naturally be expected, then, that among the 
earliest literary efforts would be found translations and para- 
phrases of the most interesting portions of the Scripture nar- 
rative. It was in accordance with the spirit of the age that 
these productions should be attended with something of the 
marvellous, to give greater effect to the doctrine, and be 
couched in poetic language, the especial delight of people in 
the earlier ages of their history. Thus the writings of Caed- 
mon are explained : he was a poor serving-brother in the 

^ Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 



ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE AND HISTORY. 35 

monastery of Whitby, who was, or feigned to be, unable to 
improvise Scripture stories and legends of the saints as his 
brethren did, and had recourse to a vision before he exhib- 
ited his fluency. 

In a dream, in a stall of oxen of which he was the ap- 
pointed night-guard, an angelic stranger asked him to sing. 
^'1 cannot sing," said Caedmon. *' Sing the creation," 
said the mysterious visitant. Feeling himself thus miracu- 
lously aided, Caedmon paraphrased in his dream the Bible 
story of the creation, and not only remembered the verses 
when he awoke, but found himself possessed of the gift of 
song for all his days. 

Sharon Turner has observed that the paraphrase of Caed- 
mon '* exhibits much of a Miltonic spirit; and if it were clear 
that Milton had been familiar with Saxon, we should be in- 
duced to think that he owed something to Caedmon." And 
the elder D' Israeli has collated and compared similar pas- 
sages in the two authors, in his '^ Amenities of Literature. " 

Another remarkable Anglo-Saxon fragment is called yz/^/Z/z, 
and gives the story of Judith and Holofernes, rendered from 
the Apocrypha, but with circumstances, descriptions, and 
speeches invented by the unknown author. It should be ob- 
served, as of historical importance, that the manners and 
characters of that Anglo-Saxon period are applied to the time 
of Judith, and so we have really an Anglo-Saxon romance, 
marking the progress and improvement in their poetic art. 

Among the other remains of this time are the death of 
Byrhtnoth, The Fight of Finsborough, and the Chronicle of 
King Lear and his Daughters, the last of which is the founda- 
tion of an old play, upon which Shakspeare's tragedy of Lear 
is based. 

It should here be noticed that Saxon literature was greatly 
influenced by the conversion of the realm at the close of the 
sixth century from the pagan religion of Woden to Chris- 
tianity. It displayed no longer the fierce genius of the Scalds, 



36 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

inculcating revenge and promising the rewards of Walhalla ; 
in spirit it was changed by the doctrine of love, and in form 
it was softened and in some degree — but only for a time — 
injured by the influence of the Latin, the language of the 
Church. At this time, also, there was a large adoption of 
Latin words into the Saxon, especially in theology and eccle- 
siastical matters. 

The Advent of Bede. — The greatest literary character 
of the Anglo-Saxon period, and the one who is of most value 
in teaching us the history of the times, both directly and in- 
directly, is the man who has been honored by his age as the 
venerable Bede or Beda. He was born at Yarrow, in the 
year 673, and died, after a retired but active, pious, and use- 
ful life, in 735. He wrote an Ecclesiastical history of the 
English, and dedicated it to the most glorious King Ceo- 
wulph of Northumberland, one of the monarchs of the Saxon 
Heptarchy. It is in matter and spirit a Saxon work in a Latin 
dress ; and, although his work was written in Latin, he is 
placed among the Anglo-Saxon authors because it is as an 
Englishman that he appears to us in his subject, in the honest 
pride of race and country which he constantly manifests, and 
in the historical information which he has conveyed to us 
concerning the Saxons in England : of a part of the history 
which he relates he was an eye-witiiess ; and besides, his work 
soon called forth several translations into Anglo-Saxon, 
among which that of Alfred the Gi-eat is the most noted, and 
would be taken for an original Saxon production. 

It is worthy of remark, that after the decline of the Saxon 
literature, Bede remained for centuries, both in the original 
Latin and in the Saxon translations, a sealed and buried book; 
but in the later days, students of English literature and his- 
tory began to look back with eager pleasure to that formative 
period prior to the Norman conquest, when English polity 
and institutions were simple and few, and when their Saxon 
progenitors were masters in the land. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE VENERABLE BEDE AND THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 



Biography. 

Ecclesiastical History. 
The Recorded Miracles. 



Bede's Latin. I Alfred the Great. 
Other Writers. Effect of the Danish Inva- 

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle : sions. 

its Value. I 



Biography. 

BEDE was a precocious youth, whose excellent parts 
commended him to Bishop Benedict. He made rapid 
progress in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew ; was a deacon at the 
unusual age of nineteen, and a priest at thirty. It seems 
probable that he always remained in his monastery, engaged 
in literary labor and offices of devotion until his death, which 
happened while he was dictating to his boy amanuensis. 
*' Dear master," said the boy, '' there is yet one sentence not 
written." He answered, ''Write quickly." Soon after, the 
boy said, ''The sentence is now written." He replied, "It 
is well ; you have said the truth. Receive my head into your 
hands, for it is a great satisfaction to me to sit facing my holy 
place where I was wont to pray, that I may also sitting, call 
upon my Father." *' And thus, on the pavement of his little 
cell, singing ' Glory be unto the Father, and unto the Son, 
and unto the Holy Ghost,' when he had named the Holy 
Ghost he breathed his last, and so departed to the heavenly 
kingdom." 

His Ecclesiastical History. — His ecclesiastical history 
opens with a description of Britain, including what was known 
of Scotland and Ireland. With a short preface concerning 
4 37 



38 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the Church in the earliest times, he dwells particularly upon 
the period, from the arrival of St. Augustine, in 597, to the 
year 731, a space of one hundred and thirty-four years, dur- 
ing nearly one-half of which the author lived. The principal 
written works from which he drew were the natural history 
of Pliny, the Hormesta of the Spanish priest Paulus OrosiuSy 
and the history of Gildas. His account of the coming of the 
Anglo-Saxons, ''being the traditions of the Kentish people 
concerning Hengist and Horsa," has since proved to be fab- 
ulous, as the Saxons are now known to have been for a long 
period, during the Roman occupancy, making predatory in- 
cursions into Britain before the time of their reputed settle- 
ment.^ 

For the materials of the principal portions of his history, 
Bede was indebted to correspondence with those parts of 
England which he did not visit, and to the lives of saints and 
contemporary documents, which recorded the numerous mir- 
acles and wonders with which his pages are filled. 

Bede's Recorded Miracles. — The subject of these mir- 
acles has been considered at some length by Dr. Arnold,^ in 
a very liberal spirit ; but few readers will agree with him in 
concluding that with regard to some miracles, ''there is no 
strong a priori improbability in their occurrence, but rather 
the contrary." One of the most striking of the historical 
lessons contained in this work, is the credulity and supersti- 
tion which mark the age ; and we reason justly and conclu- 
sively from the denial of the most palpable and absurd, to 

1 Kemble (" Saxon in England ") suggests the resemblance between the 
fictitious landing of Hengist and Horsa " in three keels," and the Gothic 
tradition of the migration of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepidae to the 
mouth of the Vistula in the same manner. Dr. Latham (English Lan- 
guage) fixes the Germanic immigration into Britain at the middle of the 
fourth, instead of the middle of the fifth century. 

2 Lectures on Modem History, lect. ii. 



THE VENERABLE BEDET 39 

the repudiation of the lesser demands on our credulity. It is 
sufficient for us that both were eagerly believed in his day, 
and thus complete a picture of the age which such a view 
would only serve to impair, if not destroy. The theology of 
the age is set forth with wonderful clearness, in the numerous 
questions propounded by Augustine to Gregory I., the Bishop 
of Rome, and in the judicious answers of that prelate ; in 
which may also be found the true relation which the Church 
of Rome bore to her English mission. 

We have also the statement of the establishment of the 
archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, the bishopric of 
London, and others. 

The last chapter but one, the twenty-third, gives an im- 
portant account " of the present state of the English nation, 
or of all Britain; " and the twenty-fourth contains a chron- 
ological recapitulation, from the beginning of the year 731, 
and a list of the author's works. Bede produced, besides his 
history, translations of many books in the Bible, several his- 
tories of abbots and saints, books of hymns and epigrams, a 
treatise on orthography, and one on poetry. 

To point the student to Bede's works, and to indicate their 
historic teachings, is all that can be here accomplished. A 
careful study of his Latin History, as the great literary mon- 
ument of the Anglo-Saxon period, will disclose many im- 
portant truths which lie beneath the surface, and thus escape 
the cursory reader. Wars and politics, of which the Anglo- 
Saxon chronicle is full, find comparatively little place in his 
pages. The Church was then peaceful, and not polemic; the 
monasteries were sanctuaries in which quiet, devotion, and 
order reigned. Another phase of the literature shows us how 
the Gentiles raged and the people were imagining a vain 
thing ; but Bede, from his undisturbed cell, scarcely heard 
the howlings of the storm, as he wrote of that kingdom which 
promised peace and good-will. 

Bede's Latin. — To the classical student, the language of 



40 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Bede offers an interesting study. The Latin had already been 
corrupted, and a nice discrimination will show the causes of 
this corruption — the effects of the other living languages, 
the ignorance of the clergy, and the new subjects and ideas 
to which it was applied. 

Bede was in the main more correct than his age, and his 
vocabulary has few words of barbarian origin. He arose like 
a luminary, and when the light of his learning disappeared, but 
one other star appeared to irradiate the gloom which followed 
his setting; and that was in the person and the reign of Alfred. 

Other Writers of this Age. — Among names which 
must pass with the mere mention, the following are, after 
Bede, the most illustrious in this time. Aldhelm, Abbot of 
Malmesbury, who died in the year 709, is noted- for his scien- 
tific computations, and for his poetry: he is said to have trans- 
lated the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon poetry. 

Alcuin, the pride of two countries, England and France, 
was born in the year of Bede's death: renowned as an Eng- 
lishman for his great learning, he was invited by Charlemagne 
to his court, and aided that distinguished sovereign in the 
scholastic and literary efforts which render his reign so illus- 
trious. Alcuin died in 804. 

The works of Alcuin are chiefly theological treatises, but 
he wrote a life of Charlemagne, which has unfortunately been 
lost, and which would have been invaluable to history in the 
dearth of memorials of that emperor and his age. 

Alfric, surnamed Grammaticus, (died 1006,) was an Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, in the tenth century, who wrote eighty 
homilies, and was, in his opposition to Romish doctrine, one 
of the earliest English reformers. 

John Scotiis Erigena, who flourished at the beginning of 
the ninth century, in the brightest age of Irish learning, set- 
tled in France, and is known as a subtle and learned scho- 
lastic philosopher. His principal work is a treatise '^ On the 
Division of Nature." Both names, Scotus and Erigena^ in- 



THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. 4I 

dicate his Irish origin ; the original Scoti being inhabitants 
of the North of Ireland. 

Dunstafiy (925-988,) commonly called Saint Dunstan, was a 
powerful and dictatorial Archbishop of Canterbury, who used 
the superstitions of monarch and people to enable him to ex- 
ercise a marvellous supremacy in the realm. He wrote com- 
mentaries on the Benedictine rule. 

These writers had but a remote and indirect bearing upon 
the progress of literature in England, and are mentioned 
rather as contemporary, than as distinct subjects of our study. 

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. — We now reach the val- 
uable and purely historical compilation known as the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle, which is a chronological arrangement of 
events 'in English history, from the birth of Christ to the year 
1 154, in the reign of Henry the Second. It is the most valua- 
ble epitome of English history during that long period. 

It is written in Anglo-Saxon, and was begun soon after the 
time of Alfred, at least as a distinct work. In it we may trace 
the changes in the language from year to year, and from 
century to century, as it passed from unmixed Saxon until, as 
the last records are by contemporary hands, it almost melted 
into modern English, which would hardly trouble an Eng- 
lishman of the present day to read. 

The first part of the Chronicle is a table of events, many of 
them fabulous, which had been originally jotted down by 
Saxon monks, abbots, and bishops. To these partial records, 
King Alfred furnished additional information, as did also, in 
all probability, Alfric and Dunstan. These were collected 
into permanent form by Plegmund, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, w4io brought the annals up to the year 891 ; from that 
date they were continued in the monasteries. Of the Saxon 
Chronicle there are no less than seven accredited ancient 
copies, of which the shortest extends to the year 977, and the 
longest to 1 154; the others extend to intermediate dates. 
4* 



42 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Its Value. — The value of the Chronicle as a statistic 
record of English history cannot be over-estimated ; it moves 
before the student of English literature like a diorama, pic- 
turing the events in succession, not without glimpses of their 
attendant philosophy. We learn much of the nation's 
thoughts, troubles, mental, moral, and physical conditions, 
social laws, and manners. As illustrations we may refer to 
the romantic adventures of King Alfred ; and to the conquest 
of Saxon England by William of Normandy — ''all as God 
granted them," says the pious chronicler, " for the people's 
sins." And he afterward adds, ''Bishop Odo and William 
the Earl built castles wide throughout the nation, and poor 
people distressed ; and ever after it greatly grew in evil : may 
the end be good when God will." Although for the most 
part written in prose, the annals of several years are given in 
the alliterative Saxon verse. 

'A good English translation of Bede's history, and one of the 
Chronicle, edited by Dr. Giles, have been issued together by 
Bohn in one volume of his Antiquarian library. To the 
student of English history and of English literature, the careful 
perusal of both, in conjunction, is an imperative necessity. 

Alfred the Great. — Among the best specimens of Saxon 
prose are the translations and paraphrases of King Alfj'ed, 
justly called the Great and the Truth-teller, the noblest 
monarch of the Saxon period. The kingdoms of the hep- 
tarchy, or octarchy, had been united under the dominion of 
Egbert, the King of Wessex, in the year 827, and thus formed 
the kingdom of England. But this union of the kingdoms 
was in many respects nominal rather than really complete ; 
as Alfred frequently subscribes himself King of the West Sax- 
ons. It was a confederation to gain strength against their 
enemies. On the one hand, the inhabitants of North, South, 
and West Wales were constantly rising against Wessex and 
Mercia ; and on the other, until the accession of Alfred upon 
the death of his brother Ethelred, in 871, every year of the 



THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. 43 

Chronicle is marked by fierce battles with the troops and fleets 
of the Danes on the eastern and southern coasts. 

It redounds greatly to the fame of Alfred that he could 
find time and inclination in his troubled and busy reign, so 
harassed with wars by land and sea, for the establishment of 
wise laws, the building or rebuilding of large cities, the pur- 
suit of letters, and the interest of education. To give his 
subjects, grown-up nobles as well as children, the benefits of 
historical examples, he translated the work of Orosius, a com- 
pendious history of the world, a work of great repute ; and 
to enlighten the ecclesiastics, he made versions of parts of 
Bede; of the Pastorale of Gregory the First; of the Solilo- 
quies of St. Augustine, and of the work of Boethius, De 
Consolatione FhilosopliicE. Beside these principal works are 
other minor efforts. In all his writings, he says he ''some- 
times interprets word for word, and sometimes meaning for 
meaning." With Alfred went down the last gleams of Saxon 
literature. Troubles were to accumulate steadily and irresist- 
ibly upon the soil of England, and the sword took the place 
of the pen. 

The Danes. — The Danes thronged into the realm in new - 
incursions, until 850,000 of them were settled in the North 
and East of England. The Danegelt or tribute, displaying 
at once the power of the invaders and the cowardice and ef- 
feminacy of the Saxon monarchs, rose to a large sum, and 
two millions ^ of Saxons were powerless to drive the invaders 
away. In the year ici6, after the weak and wicked reign of 
the besotted Ethelred, justly surnamed the Unready, who to 
his cowardice in paying tribute added the cruelty of a whole- 
sale massacre on St. Brice's Eve — since called the Danish 
St. Bartholomew — the heroic Edmund Ironsides could not 
stay the storm, but was content to divide the kingdom with 
Knud (Canute) the Great. Literary efforts were at an end. 
For twenty-two years the Danish kings sat upon the throne 

1 Sharon Turner. 



44 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

of all England ; and when the Saxon line was restored in the 
person of Edward the Confessor, a monarch not calculated 
to restore order and impart strength, in addition to the in- 
ternal sources of disaster, a new element of evil had sprung 
up in the power and cupidity of the Normans. 

Upon the death of Edward the Confessor, the claimants to 
the throne were Harold, the son of Godwin, and Willia7ti of 
Normandy, both ignoring the claims of the Saxon heir ap- 
parent, Edgar Atheling. Harold, as has been already said, 
fell a victim to the dissensions in his own ranks, as well as to 
the courage and strength of William, and thus Saxon England 
fell under Norman rule. 

The Literary Philosophy. — The literary philosophy of 
this period does not lie far beneath the surface of the historic 
record. Saxon literature was expiring by limitation. During 
the twelfth century, the Saxon language was completely trans- 
f rmed into English. The intercourse of many previous years 
havl introduced a host of Norman French words; inflections 
had been lost ; new ideas, facts, and objects had sprung up, 
requiring new names. The dying Saxon literature was over- 
shadowed by the strength and growth of the Norman, and it 
had no royal patron and protector since Alfred. The supe- 
rior art-culture and literary attainments of the South, had long 
been silently making their impression in England ; and it had 
been the custom to send many of the English youth of noble 
families to France to be educated. 

Saxon chivalry^ was rude and unattractive in comparison 
with the splendid armor, the gay tournaments, and the witch- 
ing minstrelsy which signalized French chivalry ; and thus the 
peaceful elements of conquest were as seductive as the force 
of arms was pote.it. A dynasty which had ruled for more 
than six hundred yeai 3 was overthrown ; a great chapter in 
English history was closed. A new order was established, 
and a new chapter in England's annals was begun. 

* Turner, ch. xii. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST AND ITS EARLIEST LITERATURE. 



Norman Rule, I William of Malmesbury. 

Its Oppression. Geoffrey of Monmouth. 

Its Benefits. 1 Other Latin Chronicles, 



Norman Rule. 



Anglo-Norman Poets. 
Richard Wace. 
Other Poets. 



WITH the conquest of England, and as one of the 
strongest elements of its permanency, the feudal sys- 
tem was brought into England ; the territory was surveyed 
and apportioned to be held by military tenure; to guard 
against popular insurrections, the curfew rigorously housed 
the Saxons at night ; a new legislature, called a parliament, or 
talking-ground, took the place of the witenagemot, or assem- 
bly of the wise : it was a conquest not only in name but in 
truth; everything was changed by the conqueror's right, and 
the Saxons were entirely subjected. 

Its Oppression. — In short, the Norman conquest, from 
the day of the battle of Hastings, brought the Saxon people 
under a galling yoke. The Norman was everywhere an op- 
pressor. Besides his right as a conqueror, he felt a con- 
tempt for the rudeness of the Saxon. He was far more 
able to govern and to teach. He founded rich abbeys ; 
schools like those of Oxford and Cambridge he expanded 
into universities like that of Paris. ,He filled all offices of 
profit and trust, and created many which the Saxons had not. 
In place of the Saxon English, which, however vigorous, was 
greatly wanting in what may be called the vocabulary of pro- 

45 



46 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

gress, the Norman French, drawing constantly upon the Latin, 
enriched by the enactments of Charlemagne and the tributes 
of Italy, even in its infancy a language of social comity in 
Western Europe, was spoken at court, introduced into the 
courts of law, taught in the schools, and threatened to sub- 
merge and drown out the vernacular. ^ All inducements to 
composition in English were wanting; delicious songs of Nor- 
man Trouv^res chanted in the Langue d' oil, and stirring tales 
of Troubadours in the Langue d' oc, carried the taste captive 
away from the Saxon, as a regal banquet lures from the plain 
fare of the cottage board, more wholesome but less attractive. 

Its Benefits. — Had this progress continued, had this 
grasp of power remained without hinderance or relaxation, the 
result would have been the destruction or amalgamation of 
the vigorous English, so as to form a romance language sim- 
ilar to the French, and only different in the amount of North- 
ern and local words. But the Norman power, without losing 
its title, was to find a limit to its encroachments. This limit 
was fixed, first, by the innate hardihood and firmness of the 
Saxon. character, which, though cast down and oppressed, 
retained its elasticity; which cherished its language in spite 
of Norman threats and sneers, and which never lost heart 
while waiting for better times ; secondly, by the insular posi- 
tion of Great Britain, fortified by the winds and waves, which 
enabled her to assimilate and mould anew whatever came into 
her borders, to the discomfiture of further continental en- 
croachments ; constituting her, in the words of Shakspeare, 

"... that pale, that white-faced shore, 
Whose foot spurns hack the ocean's roaring tides, 
And coops from other lands her islanders ; " 

and, thirdly, to the Crusades, which, attracting the nobles to 

1 For the discussion of the time and circumstances of the introduction 
of French into law processes, see Craik, i. 117. 



EARLIEST NORMAN LITERATURE. 4/ 

adventures in Palestine, lifted the heel of Norman oppression 
off the Saxon neck, and gave that opportunity, which alone 
was needed, to make England in reality, if not in name — in 
thews, sinews, and mental strength, if not in regal state and 
aristocratic privilege — Saxon-England in all its future history. 
Other elements are still found, but the Saxon greatly pre- 
dominates. 

The historian of that day might well bemoan the fate of th'e 
realm, as in the Saxon Chronicle already quoted. To the 
philosopher of to-day, this Norman conquest and its results 
were of incalculable value to England, by bringing her into 
relations with the continent, by enduing her with a weight 
and influence in the affairs of Europe which she could never 
otherwise have attained, and by giving a new birth to a noble 
literature which has had no superior in any period of the 
world's history. 

As our subject does not require, and our space will not 
warrant the consideration of the rise and progress of French 
literature, before its introduction with the Normans into Eng- 
land, we shall begin with the first fruits after its transplanta- 
tion into British soil. But before doing so, it becomes neces- 
sary to mention certain Latin chronicles which furnished food 
for these Anglo-Norman poets and legendists. 

William of Malmesbury. — William of Malmesbury, the 
first Latin historian of distinction, who is contemporary with 
the Norman conquest, wrote a work called the *' Heroic 
Deeds of the English Kings," {^Gesta Regum Anglorum,') 
which extends from the arrival of the Saxons to the year 
1 1 20; another, ''The New History," {Historia Novella,^ 
brings the history down to 1142. Notwithstanding the cre- 
dulity of the age, and his own earnest recital of numerous 
miracles, these works are in the main truthful, and of real 
value to the historical student. In the contest between Ma- 
tilda and Stephen for the succession of the English crown, 



48 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

William of Malmesbury is a strong partisan of the former, 
and his work thus stands side by side, for those who would 
have all the arguments, with the Gesfa Sfephani, by an un- 
known contemporary, which is written in the interest of 
Stephen. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth. — More famous than the monk 
of Malmesbury, but by no means so truthful, stands Geof- 
frey of Monmouth, Archdeacon of Monmouth and Bishop of 
St. Asaph's, a writer to whom the rhyming chronicles and 
Anglo-Norman poets have owed so much. Walter, a Deacon 
of Oxford, it is said, had procured from Brittany a Welsh 
chronicle containing a history of the Britons from the time 
of one Brutus, a great-grandson of ^neas, down to the sev- 
enth century of our era. From this, partly in translation and 
partly in original creation, Geoffrey wrote his '' History of 
the Britons." Catering to the popular prejudice, he revived, 
and in part created, the deeds of Arthur and the Knights of 
the Round Table — fabulous heroes who have figured in the 
best English poetry from that day to the present, their best 
presentation having been made in the Idyls of the King, 
(Arthur,) by Tennyson. 

The popular philosophy of Geoffrey's work is found in the 
fact, that while in Bede and in the Saxon Chronicle the 
Britons had not been portrayed in such a manner as to flatter 
the national vanity, which seeks for remote antecedents of 
greatness ; under the guise of the Chronicle of Brittany, 
Geoffrey undertook to do this. Polydore Virgil distinctly 
cnndemns him for relating ^'many fictitious things of King 
Arthur and the ancient Britons, invented by himself, and 
pretended to be translated by him into Latin, which he palms 
on the world with the sacred name of true history; " and this 
view is substantiated by the fact that the earlier writers speak 
of Arthur as a prince and a warrior, of no colossal fame — 
*' well known, but not idolized. . . . That he was a courage- 



EARLIEST NORMAN LITERATURE. 49 

ous warrior is unquestionable ; but that he was the miraculous 
Mars of the British history, from whom kings and nations 
shrunk in panic, is completely disproved by the temperate 
encomiums of his contemporary bards." ^ 

It is of great historical importance to observe the firm hold 
taken by this fabulous character upon the English people, as 
evinced by the fact that he has been a popular hero of the 
English epic ever since. * Spenser adopted him as the presid- 
ing genius of his ''Fairy Queen," and Milton projected a 
great epic on his times, before he decided to wjite the Para- 
dise Lost. 

Other Principal Latin Chroniclers of the Early Norman Period. 

Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, 1075-1109: History of Croyland. Au- 
thenticity disputed. 

William of Poictiers, 1070 : Deeds of William the Conqueror, (Gesta Gul- 
lielmi Ducis Normannorum et Regis Anglorum.) 

Ordericus Vitalis, born about 1075: general ecclesiastical history. 

William of Jumieges : Histoiy of the Dukes of Normandy, 

Florence of Worcester, died 1 118: (Chronicon ex Chronicis,) Chronicle 
from the Chronicles, from the Creation to 1 118, (with two valuable ad- 
ditions to 1 141, and to 1295.) 

Matthew of Westminster, end of thirteenth century (probably a fictitious 
name): Flowers of the Histories, (Flores Historiarum.) 

Eadmer, died about 1 1 24: history of his own time, (Historia Novorum, 
sive sui seculi.) 

Giraldus Cambrensis, born 1146, known as Girald Barry: numerous his- 
tories, including Topographia Hiberniae, and the Norman conquest of 
Ireland ; also several theological works. 

Henry of Huntingdon, first half of the twelfth century : History of England. 

Alured of Rievaux, 1 109-66 : The Battle of the Standard. 

Roger de Hoveden, end of twelfth century: Annales, from the end of 
Bede's history to 1202. 

Matthew Paris, monk of St. Alban's, died 1259: Historia Major, from the 
Norman conquest to 1259, continued by William Rishanger to 1322. 

^ vSharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, i. 199. For an admi- 
rable summary of the bardic symbolisms and mythological types exhibited 
in the story of Arthur, see H. Martin, Hist, de France, liv. xx. 
5 D 



50 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Ralph Higden, fourteenth century : Poly chroni con, or Chronicle of Many 
Things; translated in the fifteenth century, by John de Trevisa; printed 
by Caxton in 1482, and by Wynken de Worde in 1485. 

The Anglo-Norman Poets and Chroniclers. — Norman 
literature had already made itself a name before William con- 
quered England. Short jingling tales in verse, in ballad 
style, were popular under the name oi fabliaux, and fuller 
epics, tender, fanciful, and spirited, called Romans, or Ro- 
maunts, were sung to the lute, in courts and camps. Of these 
latter, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and Roland were 
the principal heroes. 

Strange as it may seem, this laiigue d' oil, in which they 
were composed, made more rapid progress in its poetical lit- 
erature, in the period immediately after the conquest, in Eng- 
land than at home : it flourished by the transplantation. Its 
advent was with an act of heroism. Taillefer, the standard- 
ll^.f bearer of William at Seiflac, marched in advance of the army, 
struck the first blow, and met his death while chanting the 
song of Roland: 

Of Charlemagne and Roland, De Karlemaine e de Rollant, 

Of Oliver and his vassals, Et d'Olivier et des vassals, 

Who died at Roncesvalles. Ki moururent en Renchevals. 

Each stanza ended with the war-shout Aoi ! and was re- 
sponded to by the cry of the Normans. Diex aide, God to aid. 
And this battle-song was the bold manifesto of Norman poe- 
try invading England. It found an echo wherever William 
triumphed on English soil, and played an important part in 
the formation of the English language and English literature. 
New scenes and new victories created new inspiration in the 
:)oets; monarchs like Henry I., called from his scholarship 
Beauclerc, practised and cherished the poetic art, and thus it 
Happened that the Norman poets in England produced works 
of sweeter minstrelsy and greater historical value than the 
fabliatix^ JRomans, and Chansons de gesies of tlieir brethren 



EARLIEST NORMAN LITERATURE. 5I 

on the continent. The conquest itself became a grand theme 
for their muse. 



Richard Wage. ■ — First among the Anglo-Norman poets 
stands Richard Wace, called Maistre Wace, reading clerk, 
(clerc lisant,) born in the island of Jersey, about 11 12, died 
in 1184. His works are especially to be noted for the direct 
and indirect history they contain. His first work, which ap- 
peared about 1 138, is entitled Le Brut d"" Angleterre — The 
English Brutus — and is in part a paraphrase of the Latin his- 
tory of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who had presented Brutus of 
Troy as the first in the line of British kings. Wace has pre- 
served the fiction of Geoffrey, and has catered to that charac- 
teristic of the English people which, not content with home- 
spun myths, sought for genealogies from the remote classic 
times. Wace's Britt is chiefly in octo-syliabic verse, and 
extends to fifteen thousand lines. 

But Wace was a courtier, as well as a poet. Not content 
with pleasing the fancy of the English people with a fabulous 
royal lineage, he proceeded to gratify the pride of their Nor- 
man masters by writing, in 11 71, his ''Roman de Rou, et 
des Dues de Normandie," an epic poem on Rollo, the first 
Duke of Normandy — Rollo, called the Marcher, because he 
was so mighty of stature that no horse could bear his weight. 
This Rollo compromised with Charles the Simple of France 
by marrying his daughter, and accepting that tract of Neus- 
tria to which he gave the name of Normandy. He was the 
ancestor, at six removes, of William the Conqueror, and his 
mighty deeds were a pleasant and popular subject for the poet 
of that day, when a great-grandson of William, Henry II., 
was upon the throne of England. The Roman de Rou con- 
tains also the history of Rollo' s successors : it is in two parts ; 
the first extending to the beginning of the reign of the third 
duke, Richard the Fearless, and the second, containing the 
story of the conquest, comes down to the time of Henry II. 



52 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

himself. The second part he wrote rapidly, for fear that he 
would be forestalled by the king's poet Benoit. The first 
part "v^^as written in Alexandrines, but for the second he 
adopted the easier measure of the octo-syllabic verse, of 
which this part contains seventeen thousand lines. In this 
poem are discerned the craving of the popular mind, the 
power of the subject chosen, and the reflection of language 
and manners, which are displayed on every page. 

So popular, indeed, was the subject of the Brut, indigenous 
as it was considered to British soil, that Wace's poem, already 
taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth, as Geoffrey had taken it, 
or pretended to take it from the older chronicle, was soon 
again, as we shall see, to be versionized into English. 

Other Norman Writers of the .Twelfth Century. 

Fhilip de Than, about 1 130, one of the Trouveres : Li livj-e de creatures 
is a poetical study of chronology, and his Bestiarie is a sort of natural 
history of animals and minerals. 

Benoit: Chroniques des Dues de Normandie, 1 160, written in thirty 
thousand octo-syllabic verses, only worthy of a passing notice, because 
of the appointment of the poet by the king, (Henry II. ,j in order lo fore- 
stall the second part of Wace's Roman de Rou. 

Geoffrey, died 1146: A miracle play of St. Catherine. 

Geoffrey Gaimar, about 11 50: Estorie des Engles, (History of the Eng- 
hsh.) 

Luc de la Barre, blinded for his bold satires by the king (Henry I.). 

Mestre Thomas, latter part of twelfth centmy: Roman du Roi Horn. 
Probably the original of the "Geste of Kyng Horn." 

Richard I., (Coeur de Lion,) died 1 199, King of England : Sirventes and 
sftngs. His antiphonal song with the minstrel Blondel is said to have 
given information of the place of his imprisonment, and procured his 
release; but this is probably only a romantic tiction. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE MORNING TWILIGHT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



Semi-Saxon Literature. 1 Robert of Gloucester. I Sir Jean Froissart. 

Layamon. Langland. Piers Plowman. Sir John Mandevil. 

The Ormulum. ' Piers Plowman's Creed. - 



Semi-Saxon Literature. 

MOORE, in his beautiful poem, ''The Light of the 
Harem," speaks of that luminous pulsation which 
precedes the real, progressive morning : 

. , . that earlier dawn 
Whose glimpses are again withdrawn, 
As if the morn had waked, and then 
Shut close her lids of light again. 

The simile is not inapt, as applied to the first efforts of the 
early English, or Semi-Saxon literature, during the latter part 
of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth century. That 
deceptive dawn, or first glimpse of the coming day, is to be 
found in the work of Layamon. The old Saxon had revived, 
but had been modified and altered by contact with the Latin 
chronicles and the Anglo-Norman poetry, so as to become a 
distinct language — that of the people; and in this language 
men of genius and poetic taste were now to speak to the Eng- 
lish nation, 

Layamon. — Layamon ^ was an English priest of Worcester- 

^ Craik says, (i. 198,) " Or, as he is also called, Lawe7}ian — for the old 
character represented in this instance by our modern y, is really only a 
5* 53 



54 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

shire, who made a version of Wace's Brut, in the beginning 
of the thirteenth century, so peculiar, however, in its language, 
as to puzzle the philologist to fix its exact date with even tol- 
erable accuracy. But, notwithstanding its resemblance, ac- 
cording to Mr. Ellis, to the "simple and unmixed, though 
very barbarous Saxon," the cliaracter of the alphabet and the 
nature of the rhythm place it at the close of the twelfth cen- 
tury, and present it as perhaps the best type of the Semi-Saxon. 
The poem consists partly of the Saxon alliterative lines, and 
partly of verses which seem to have thrown off this trammel ; 
so that a different decision as to its date would be reached 
according as we consider these diverse parts of its structure. 
It is not improbable that, like English poets of a later time, 
Layamon affected a certain archaism in language, as giving 
greater beauty and interest to his style. The subject of the 
Brut was presented to him as already treated by three authors: 
first, the original Celtic poem, which has been lost; second, 
the Latin chronicle of Geoffrey ; and, third, the French poem 
of Wace. Although Layamon' s work is, in the main, a trans- 
lation of that of Wace, he has modified it, and added much of 
his own. His poem contains more than thirty thousand lines. 

The Ormulum. — Next in value to the Brut of Layamon, 
is the Ormulum, a series of metrical homilies, in part para- 
phrases of the gospels for the day, with verbal additions and 
annotations. This was the work of a m.onk named Orm or 
Onnin, who lived in the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
during the reign of King John and Henry HL, and it resem- 
bles our present English much m.ore nearly than the poem of 
Layamon. In his dedication of the work to his brother Wal- 
ter, Orm says — and we give his vv'ords as an illustration of 
the language in which he wrote : 

guttural, (and by no means either a _/' or a z,) by which it is sometimes 
rendered." Marsh says, " Or, perhaps, Lagamon^ for we do not know 
the sound of j in this name." 



THE MORNING TWILIGHT. $$ 

Ice hafe don swa summ thu bad I have done so as thou bade, 

Annd forthedd te thin wille And performed thee thine will; 

Ice hafe wennd uintill Ennglissh I have turned into English 

Goddspelless hallghe lare Gospel's holy lore, 

Affterr thatt little witt tatt me After that little wit that me 

Min Drihhten hafethth lenedd My lord hath lent. 

The poem is written in Alexandrine verses, which may be 
divided into octo-syllabic lines, alternating with those of six 
syllables, as in the extract given above. He is critical with 
regard to his orthography, as is evinced in the following in- 
structions which he gives to his future readers and transcriber: 

And whase vvillen shall this booke And whoso shall wish this book 

Eft other sithe writen. After other time to write, 

Him bidde ice that he 't write right Him bid I that he it write right, 

Swa sum this booke him teacheth So as this book him teacheth. 

The critics have observed that, whereas the language of 
Layamon shows that it was written in the southwest of Eng- 
land, that of Orm manifests an eastern or northeastern origin. 
To the historical student, Orm discloses the religious condi- 
tion and needs of the people, and the teachings of the 
Church. His poem is also manifestly a landmark in the 
history of the English language. 

Robert of Gloucester. — Among the rhyming chron- 
iclers of this period, Robert, a monk of Gloucester Abbey, 
is noted for his reproduction of the history of Geoffrey of 
Monmouth, already presented by Wace in French, and by 
Layamon in Saxon-English. But he is chiefly valuable in 
that he carries the chronicle forward to the end of the reign 
of Henry IH. Written in West-country English, it not only 
contains a strong infusion of French, but distinctly states the 
prevailing influence of that language in his own day : 

Vor bote a man couthe French, me tolth of him well lute 

Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss, and to her kunde speche zute. 



56 FNGLISH LITERATURE. 

For unless a man know French, one talketh of him little; 
But low men hold to English, and to their natural speech yet. 

The chronicle of Robert is written in Alexandrines, and, 
except for the French words incongruously interspersed, is 
almost as *' barbarous" Saxon as the Brut of Layamon. 

Lafgland — Piers Plowman. — The greatest of the im- 
medipte heralds of Chaucer, whether we regard it as a work 
of literary art, or as an historic reflector of the age, is '' The 
Vision of Piers Plowman," by Robert Langland, which ap- 
peared between 1360 and 1370. It stands between the Semi- 
Saxon and the old English, in point of language, retaining 
the alliterative feature of the former; and, as a teacher of 
history, it displays very clearly the newly awakened spirit 
of reli^'ious inquiry, and the desire for religious reform among 
the Erjglish people : it certainly was among the means which 
aided in establishing a freedom of religious thought in Eng- 
land, while as yet the continent was bound in the fetters of 
a rigorous and oppressive authority. 

Peter, the ploughboy, intended as a representative of the 
common people, drops asleep on Malvern Hills, between 
Wales and England, and sees in his dream an array of virtues 
and vices pass before him — such as Mercy, Truth, Religion, 
Covetousness, Avarice, etc. The allegory is not unlike that 
of Bunyan. By using these as the personages, in the manner 
of the early dramas called the Moralities, he is enabled to 
attack and severely scourge the evil lives and practices of the 
clergy, and the abuses which had sprung up in the Church, 
and to foretell the punishment, which afterward fell upon the 
monasteries in the time of Henry VHI., one hundred and 
fifty years later : 

And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, and all his issue forever, 
Have a knock of a king, and incurable the wound. 

His attack is not against the Church itself, but against the 



THE MORNING TWILIGHT. 5/ 

clergy. It is to be remarked, in studying history through 
the medium of literature, that the works of a certain period, 
themselves the result of history, often illustrate the coming 
age, by being prophetic, or rather, as antecedents by suggest- 
ing consequents. Thus, this Vision of Piers Plowman indi- 
cates the existence of a popular spirit which had been slowly 
but steadily increasing — which sympathized with Henry II. 
and the priest-trammelling " Constitutions of Clarendon," 
even while it was ready to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine 
of Thomas a Becket, the illustrious victim of the quarrel be- 
tween Henry and his clergy. And it points with no uncertain 
finger to a future of greater light and popular development, 
for this bold spirit of reform was strongly allied to political 
rights. The clergy claimed both spiritualities and temporal- 
ities from the Pope, and, being governed by ecclesiastical 
laws, were not like other English subjects amenable to the 
civil code. The king's power was thus endangered ; a proud 
and encroaching spirit was fostered, and the clergy became 
dissolute in their lives. In the words of Piers Plowman : 



I found these freres, 
All the four orders, 
Preaching the people 



And again 



Ac now is Religion 

A rider, a roamer about, 

A leader of love days 



For profit of hem selve ; 
Closed the gospel, 
As hem good liked. 



And a lond buyer, 

A pricker on a palfrey, 

From manor to manor. 



Piers Plowman's Creed. — The name of Piers Plowman 
and the conceit of his Vision became at once very popular. 
He stood as a representative of the peasant class rising in im- 
portance and in assertion of religious rights. 

An unknown follower of Wiclif wrote a poem called *' Piers 
Plowman's Creed," which conveys religious truth in a formula 
of belief. The language and the alliterative feature are similar 



5$ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

to those of the Vision; and the invective is against the clergy, 
and especially against the monks and friars. 

Froissart. — Sire Jean Froissart was born about 1337. He 
is placed here for the observance of chronological Order : he 
was not an English writer, but must receive special mention 
because his *' Chronicles," although written in French, treat 
of the English wars in France, and present splendid pictures 
of English chivalry and heroism. He lived, too, for some 
time in England, where he figured at court as the secretary of 
Philippa, queen of Edward UI. Although not always to be 
relied on as an historian, his work is unique and charming, and 
is very truthful in its delineation of the men and manners of 
that age : it was written for courtly characters, and not for 
the common people. The title of his work may be translated 
^' Chronicles of France, England, Scotland, Spain, Brittany, 
Gascony, Flanders, and surrounding places." 

Sir John Mandevil, (1300-13 71.) — We also place in 
this general catalogue a work which has, ever since its appear- 
ance, been considered one of the curiosities of English litera- 
ture. It is a narrative of the travels of Mandevil in the East. 
He was born in 1300; became a doctor of medicine, and 
journeyed m those regions of the earth for thirty-four years. 
A portion of the time he was in service with a Mohammedan 
army; at other times he lived in Egypt, and in China, and, 
returning to England an old man, he brought such a budget 
of wonders — true and false — stories of immense birds like 
the roc, which figure in Arabian mythology and romance, 
and which could carry elephants through the air — of men 
with tails, which were probably orang-outangs or gorillas. 

Some of his tales, which were then entirely discredited, 
have been ascertained by modern travellers to be true. His 
work was written by him first in Latin, and then in French 
— Latin for the savans, and French for the court — and 



THE MORNING TWILIGHT. 59 

afterward, such was the power and demand of the new English 
tongue, that he presented his marvels to the world in an Eng- 
lish version. This was first printed by Wynken de Worde, 
in 1499. 

Other Writers of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 
WHO preceded Chaucer. 

Robert Manning, a canon of Bourne — called also Robert de Brunne: 
Translated a portion of Wace's Bi'tit, and also a chronicle of Piers de 
Langtoft bringing the history down to the death of Edward I. (1307.) 
He is also supposed to be the author of a translation of the " Manuel 
des Pech(fs, (Handling of Sins,) the original of which is ascribed to 
Bishop Grostete of Lincoln. 

The Ancren Riwle, or Anchoresses' Rule, about 1200, by an unknown 
writer, sets forth the duties of a monastic life for three ladies (anchor- 
esses) and their household in Dorsetshire. 

Roger Bacon, (1214-1292,) a friar of Ilchester: He extended the area 
of knowledge by his scientific experiments, but wrote his Opus Magus, 
or greater work, in comparison with the Opus Minus, and numerous 
other treatises in Latin. If he was not a writer in English, his name 
should be mentioned as a great genius, whose^scientific knowledge was 
far in advance of his age, and who had prophetic glimpses of the future 
conquests of science. 

Robert Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, died 1253, was probably the author 
of the Manuel des Peches, and also wrote a treatise on the sphere. 

Sir Michael Scott: He lived in the latter half of the thirteenth centuiy; 
was a student of the " occult sciences," and also skilled in theology 
and medicine. He is referred to by Walter Scott as the " wondrous 
wizard, Michael Scott." 

Thomas of Ercildoun — called the Rhymer — supposed by Sir Walter 
Scott, but erroneously, as is now believed, to be the author of " Sir 
Tristram." 

The King of Tars is the work of an unknown author of this period. 

In thus disposing of the authors before Chaucer, no attempt 
has been made at a nice subdivision and classification of the 
character of the works, or the nature of the periods, further 
than to trace the onward movement of the language, in its 
embryo state, in its birth, and in its rude but healthy infancy. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CHAUCER, AND THE EARLY REFORMATION. 



A New Era — Chaucer. 
Italian Influence. 
Chaucer as a Founder. 



Earlier Poems. 

The Canterbury Tales. 

Characters, 



Satire. 

Presentations of Woman. 

The Plan Proposed. 



The Beginning of a New Era. 

AND now it is evident, from what has been said, that we 
stand upon the eve of a great movement in history and 
literature. Up to this time everything had been more or less 
tentative, experimental, and disconnected, all tending indeed, 
but with little unity of action, toward an established order. 
It began to be acknowledged that though the clergy might 
write in Latin, and Frenchmen in French, the English should 
*'show their fantasyes in such words as we learneden of our 
dame's tonge," and it was equally evident that that English 
must be cultivated and formed into a fitting vehicle for vig- 
orous English thought. To do this, a master mind was re- 
quired, and such a master mind appeared in the person of 
Chaucer. It is particularly fortunate for our historic theory 
that his works, constituting the origin of our homogeneous 
English literature, furnish forth its best and most striking de- 
monstration. 

Chaucer's Birth. — Geoffrey Chaucer was born at Lon- 
don about the year 1328 : as to the exact date, we waive all 
the discussion in which his biographers have engaged, and 
consider this fixed as the most probable time. His parentage 
is unknown, although Leland, the English antiquarian, de- 

60 



CHAUCER, AND THE EARLY REFORMATION. 6l 

clares him to have come of a noble family, and Pitts says he 
was the son of a knight. He died in the year 1400, and thus 
was an active and observant contemporary of events in the 
most remarkable century which had thus far rolled over Europe 
— the age of Edward III. and the Black Prince, of Crecy 
and Poitiers, of English bills and bows, stronger than French 
lances; the age of Wiclif, of reformation in religion, govern- 
ment, language, and social order. Whatever his family ante- 
cedents, he was a courtier, and a successful one ; his wife was 
Philippa, a sister of Lady Katherine Swinford, first the .mis- 
tress and then the wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. 

Italian Influence. — From a literary point of view, the 
period of his birth was remarkable for the strong influence of 
Italian letters, which first having made its entrance into 
France, now, in natural course of progress, found its way 
into England. Dante had produced, 

... in the darkness prest, 
From his own soul by worldly weights, . . , 

the greatest poem then known to modern Europe, and the 
most imaginative ever written. Thus the Italian sky was 
blazing with splendor, while the West was still in the morn- 
ing twilight. The Divina Commedia was written half a 
century before the Canterbury Tales. 

Boccaccio was then writing his Filostrato, which was to be 
Chaucer's model in the Troilus and Creseide, and his Deca- 
meron, which suggested the plan of the Canterbury Tales. 
His Teseide is also said to be the original of the Knight's 
Tale. Petrarch, '' the worthy clerke " from whom Chaucer 
is said to have learned a story or two in Italy for his great 
work, was born in 1304, and was also a star of the first mag- 
nitude in that Italian galaxy. 

Indeed, it is here worthy of a passing remark, that from 
that early time to a later period, many of the great products 
6 



62 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

of English poetry have been watered by silver rills of imagin- 
ative genius from a remote Italian source. Chaucer's indebt- 
edness has just been noticed. Spenser borrowed his versifi- 
cation and not a little of his poetic handling in the Faery 
Queen from Ariosto. Milton owes to Dante some of his 
conceptions of heaven and hell in his Paradise Lost, while 
his Lycidas, Arcades, Allegro and Penseroso, may be called 
Italian poems done into English. 

In the time of Chaucer, this Italian influence marks the ex- 
tended relations of English letters; and, serving to remove 
the trammels of the French, it gave to the now vigorous and 
growing English that opportunity of development for which it 
had so long waited. Out of the serfdom and obscurity to 
which it had been condemned by the Normans, it had sprung 
forth in reality, as in name, the English language. Books, 
few at the best, long used in Latin or French, were now de- 
manded by English mind, and being produced in answer to 
the demand. 

The Founder of the Literature. — But there was still 
wanted a man who could use the elements and influences of 
the time — a great poet — a maker — a creator of literature. 
The language needed a forming, controlling, fixing hand. 
The English mind needed a leader and master, English im- 
agination a guide, English literature a father. 

The person who answered to this call, and who was equal 
to all these demands, was Chaucer. But he was something 
more. He claimed only to be a poet, while he was to figure 
in after times as historian, philosopher, and artist. 

The scope of this work does not permit an examination of 
Chaucer's writings in detail, but the position we have taken 
will be best illustrated by his greatest work, the Canterbury 
Tales. Of the others, a few preliminary words only need be 
said. Like most writers in an early literary period, Chaucer 
began with translations, which were extended into paraphrases 



CHAUCER^ AND THE EARLY REFORMATION. 63 

or versions, and thus his '' 'prentice hand " gained the prac- 
tice and skill with which to attempt original poems. 

Minor Poems. — His earliest attempt, doubtless, was the 
Romaiuit of the Rose, an allegorical poem in French, by 
William de Lorris, continued, after his death in 1260, by Jean 
de Meun, who figured as a poet in the court of Charles le 
Bel, of France. This poem, esteemed by the French as the 
finest of their old romances, was rendered by Chaucer, with 
considerable alterations and improvements, into octosyllabic 
verse. The Romaunt portrays the trials which a lover meets 
and the obstacles he overcomes in pursuit of his mistress, un- 
der the allegory of a rose in an inaccessible garden. It has 
been variously construed — by theologians as the yearning of 
man for the celestial city ; by chemists as the search for the 
philosopher's stone; by jurists as that for equity, and by 
medical men as the attempt to produce a panacea for all hu- 
man ailments. 

Next in order was his Ti'oiliis and Creseide, a mediaeval 
tale, already attempted by Boccaccio in his Filostrate, but 
borrowed by Chaucer, according to his own account, from 
Lollius, a mysterious name without an owner. The story is 
similar to that dramatized by Shakspeare in his tragedy of 
the sanie title. This is in decasyllabic verse, arranged in 
stanzas of seven lines each. 

The House of Fame, another of his principal poems, is a 
curious description — probably his first original effort — of 
the Temple of Fame, an immense cage, sixty miles long, and 
its inhabitants the great writers of classic times, and is chiefly 
valuable as showing tlie estimation in which the classic writers 
were held in that day. This is also in octosyllabic verses, 
and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and 
its variety of description. The poet is carried in the claws of 
a great eagle into this house, and sees its distinguished oc- 
cupants standing upon columns of different kinds of metal, 



64 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

according to their merits. The poem ends with the third 
book, very abruptly, as Chaucer awakes from his vision. 

''The Legend of Good Women " is a record of the loves 
and misfortunes of celebrated women, and is supposed to have 
been written to make amends for the author's other unjust 
portraitures of female character. 

The Canterbury Tales. — In order to give system to our 
historic inquiries, we shall now present an outHne of the Can- 
terbury Tales, in order that we may show — 

I. The indications of a general desire in that period for a 
reformation in religion. 

II. The social condition of the English people. 

III. The important changes in government. 

IV. The condition and progress of the English language. 
The Canterbury Tales were begun in 1386, when Chaucer 

was fifty-eight years old, and in a period of comparative quiet, 
after the minority of Richard II. was over, and before his 
troubles had begun. They form a beautiful gallery of cabinet 
pictures of English society in all its grades, except the very 
highest and the lowest; and, in this respect, they supplement 
in exact lineaments and the freshest coloring those compen- 
diums of English history which only present to us, on the 
one hand, the persons and deeds of kings and their nobles, 
and, on the other, the general laws which so long oppressed 
the lower orders of the people, and the action of which is 
illustrated by disorders among them. But in Chaucer we 
find the true philosophy of English society, the principle of 
the guilds, or fraternities, to which his pilgrims belong — the 
character and avocation of the knight, squire, yeoman, frank- 
lin, bailiff, sompnour, reeve, etc., names, many of them, now 
obsolete. Who can find these in our compendiums? they 
must be dug — and dry work it is — out of profounder his- 
tories, or found, with greater pleasure, in poems like that of 
Chaucer. 



CHAUCER, AND THE EARLY REFORMATION. 6$ 

Characters. — Let us consider, then, a few of his principal 
characters which most truly represent the age and nation. 

The Tabard inn at South wark, then a suburb of " London 
borough without the walls," was a great rendezvous for pil- 
grims who were journeying to the shrine of St. Thomas k 
Becket, at Canterbury — that Saxon archbishop who had 
been murdered by the minions of Henry IL Southwark was 
on the high street, the old Roman highway from London to 
the southeast. A gathering of pilgrims here is no uncommon 
occurrence ; and thus numbers and variety make a combina- 
tion of penitence and pleasure. The host of the Tabard — 
doubtless a true portraiture of the landlord of that day — 
counts noses, that he may distribute the pewter plates. A 
substantial supper smokes upon the old-fashioned Saxon-Eng- 
lish board — so substantial that the pilgrims are evidently 
about to lay in a good stock, in anticipation of poor fare, the 
fatigue of travel, and perhaps a fast or two not set down in 
the calendar. As soon as they attack the viands, ale and 
strong wines, hippocras, pigment, and claret, are served in 
bright pewter and wood. There were Saxon drinks for the 
commoner pilgrims ; the claret v/as for the knight. Every 
one drinks at his will, and the miller, as we shall see, takes a 
little more than his head can decently carry. 

First in the place of honor is the knight, accompanied by 
his son, the young squire, and his trusty yeoman. Then, in 
order of social rank, a prioress, a nun and three priests, a 
friar, a merchant, a poor scholar or clerk of Oxford, a ser- 
geant of the law, a frankelein, a haberdasher, a weaver, a 
tapster, a dyer, a cook, a shipman, a doctor of physic, a wife 
of Bath, a poor parson, a ploughman, a miller, a manciple or 
college steward, a reeve or bailiff, a sompnour or summoner 
to the ecclesiastical courts, a pardoner or seller of papal in- 
dulgences (one hundred and fifty years before Luther) — an 
essentially English company of many social grades, bound to 
the most popular shrine, that of a Saxon archbishop, himself 
6* E 



66 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the son of a London citizen, murdered two hundred years be- 
fore with the connivance of an EngHsh king. No one can read 
this list without thinking that if Chaucer be true and accurate 
in his descriptions of these persons, and make them talk as 
they did talk, his delineations are of inestimable value his- 
torically. He has been faithfully true. Like all great mas- 
ters of the epic art, he doubtless drew them from the life ; 
each, given in the outlines of the prologue, is a speaking por- 
trait : even the horses they ride are as true to nature as those 
in the pictures of Rosa Bonheur. 

And besides these historic delineations which mark the age 
and country, notwithstanding the loss of local and personal 
satire with which, to the reader of his day, the poem must have 
sparkled, and which time has destroyed for us, the features 
of our common humanity are so well portrayed, that to the 
latest generations will be there displayed the " forth showing 
instances" of the I(/o/a Tribus of Bacon, the besetting sins, 
frailties, and oddities of the human race. 

Satire. — His touches of satire and irony are as light as the 
hits of an accomplished master of the small-sword ; mere hits, 
but significant of deep thrusts, at the scandals, abuses, and 
oppressions of the age. Like Dickens, he employed his fic- 
tion in the way of reform, and helped to effect it. 

Let us illustrate. While sitting at the table, Chaucer makes 
his sketches for the Prologue. A few of these will serve here 
as specimens of his powers. Take the Doctou?- of Physike^ 

who 

Knew the cause of even' maladie. 
Were it of cold or hote or wet or drie ; 

who also knew 

. . . the old Esculapius, 
And Dioscorides and eke Rufus, 
Old Hippocras, Rasis, and Avicen, 

and many other classic authorities in medicine. 



CHAUCER, AND THE EARLY REFORMATION. 6/ 

Of his diete mesurahle was he, 
And it was of no superfluite ; 

nor was it a gross slander to say of the many, 
His studie was but litel on the Bible. 

It was a suggestive satire which led him to hint that he was 

. . . but esy of dispense ; 
He kepte that he wan in pestilence ; 
For gold in physike is a cordial; 

Therefore he loved gold in special. 

Chaucer deals tenderly with the lawyers ; yet, granting his 
sergeant of the law discretion and wisdom, a knowledge of 
cases even '"from the time of King Will," and fees and 
perquisites quite proportional, he adds, 

Nowher so besy a man as he ther n' as, 
And yet he seemed besier than he was. 

His Presentations of Woman. — Woman seems to find 
hard judgment in this work. ]SIadame Eglantine, the prioress, 
with her nasal chanting, her English-French, "of Stratford- 
atte-Bow," her legion of smalle houndes, and her affected 
manner, is not a flattering type of woman's character, and 
yet no doubt she is a faithful portrait of many a prioress of 
that day. 

And the wife of Bath is still more repulsive. She tells us, 
in the prologue to her story, that she has buried five husbands, 
and, buxom still, is looking for the sixth. She is a jolly 
compagnon de voyage, had been thrice to Jerusalem, and is 
now seeking assoil for some little sins at Canterbury. And 
the host's wife, as he describes her, is not by any means a 
pleasant helpmeet for an honest man. The host is out of 
her hearing, or he would not be so ready to tell her char- 
acter : 



68 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

I have a wif, tho' that she poore be ; 

But of her tongue a blabbing shrew is she, 

And yet she hath a heap of vices mo, 

She is always getting into trouble with the neighbors; and 
when he will not fight in her quarrel, she cries, 

. . . False coward, wreak thy wif; 
By corpus domini, I will have thy knife, 
And thou shalt have my distaff and go spin. 

The best names she has for him are milksop, coward, and 
ape ; and so we say, with him. 

Come, let us pass away from this mattere. 

The Plan Proposed. — With these suggestions of the na- 
ture of the company assembled ''for to don their pilgrimage," 
we come to the framework of the story. While sitting at the 
table, the host proposes 

That each of 3'ou, to shorten with your way, 
In this viage shall tellen tales twey. 

Each pilgrim should tell two stories ; one on the way to Can- 
terbury, and one returning. As, including Chaucer and the 
host, there are thirty-one in the company, this would make 
sixty-two stories. The one who told the best story should 
have, on the return of the company to the Tabard inn, a sup- 
per at the expense of the rest. 

The host's idea was unanimously accepted ; and in the 
morning, as they ride forth, tliey begin to put it into execu- 
tion. Although lots are drawn for the order in which the 
stories shall be told, it is easily arranged by the courteous 
host, who recognizes the difference in station among the pil- 
grims, that the knight shall inaugurate the scheme, which he 
does by telling that beautiful story oi Fala77ion and Ar cite, 
the plot of whi.:h is taken from Le Teseide of Boccacio. It 



CHAUCER, AND THE EARLY REFORMATION. 69 

is received with cheers by the company, and with great delight 
by the host, who cries out, 

So mote I gon — this goth ariglit, 
Unbockled is the mail. 

The next in order is called for, but the miller, who has re- 
plenished his midnight potations in the morning, and is now 
rolling upon his horse, swears that ''he can a noble tale," 
and, not heeding the rebuke of the host, 

Thou art a fool, thy wit is overcome, 

he shouts out a vulgar story, in all respects in direct contrast 
to that of the knight. As a literary device, this rude intro- 
duction of the miller breaks the stiffness and monotony of a 
succession in the order of rank; and, as a feature of the his- 
tory, it seems to tell us something of democratic progress. 
The miller's story ridicules a carpenter, and the reeve, who is 
a carpenter, immediately repays him by telling a tale in which 
he puts a miller in a ludicrous position. 

With such a start, the pilgrims proceed to tell their tales; 
but not all. There is neither record of their reaching Can- 
terbury, nor returning. Nor is the completion of the number 
at all essential : for all practical purposes, we have all that 
can be asked ; and had the work been completed, it would 
have added little to the historical stores which it now indi- 
rectly, and perhaps unconsciously, offers. The number of 
the tales (including two in prose) is twenty-four, and great 
additional value is given to them by the short prologue intro- 
ducing each of them. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHAUCER, (continued.) REFORMS IN RELIGION AND 

SOCIETY. 



Historical Facts. 
Reform in Religion. 
The Clergy, Regular and 
Secular. 



The Friar and the Somp- 

nour. 
The Pardonere. 
The Poure Persone. 



John Wiclif. 

The Translation of the 

Bible. 
The Ashes of Wiclif. 



Historical Facts. 

LEAVING the pilgrims' cavalcade for a more philosoph- 
ical consideration of the historical teachings of the 
subject, it may be clearly shown that the work of Chaucer 
informs us of a wholesome reform in religion, or, in the words 
of George Ellis,' ''he was not only respected as the father 
of English poetry, but revered as a champion of the Reform- 
ation." 

Let us recur briefly to the history. With William the Con- 
queror a great change had been introduced into England : 
under him and his immediate successors — his -san William 
Rufus, his nephew Henry I., the usurper Stephen, and Henry 
II., — the efforts of the "English kings of Norman race " 
were directed to the establishment of their power on a strong 
foundation ; but they began, little by little, to see that the 
only foundation was that of the unconquerable English people ; 
so that popular rights soon began to be considered, and the 
accession of Henry II., the first of the Plantagenets, was spe- 
cially grateful to the English, because he was the first since the 



1 Introduction to the Poets of Queen Elizabeth's Age. 



70 



CHAUCER. — REFORMS IN RELIGION. 7I 

Conquest to represent the Saxon line, being the grandson of 
Henry I., and son oi-- Matilda^ niece of Edgar Atheling. In 
the mean time, as has been seen, the English language had 
been formed, the chief element of which was Saxon. This 
was a strong instrument of political rights, for community 
of language tended to an amalgamation of the Norman and 
Saxon peoples. With regard to the Church in England ; the 
insulation from Rome had impaired the influence of the Pa* 
pacy. The misdeeds and arrogance of the clergy had arrayed 
both people and monarch against their claims, as several 
of the satirical poems already mentioned have shown. As 
a privileged class, who used their immunities to do evil 
and corrupt the realm, the clergy became odious to the 
nobles, whose power they shared and sometimes impaired, 
and to tho. people, who could now read their faults and despise 
their comminations, and who were unwilling to pay hard- 
earned wages to support them in idleness and vice. It was not 
the doctrine, but the practice which they condemned. With 
the accession of the house of Plantagenet, the people were made 
to feel that the Norman monarchy was a curse, without alloy. 
Richard I. was a knight-errant and a crusader, who cared 
little for the realm ; John was an adulterer, traitor, and coward, 
who roused the people's anger by first quarrelling with the 
Pope, and then basely giving him the kingdom to receive it 
again as a papal fief. The nation, headed by the warlike 
barons, had forced the great charter of popular rights from 
John, and had caused it to be confirmed and supplemented 
during the long reign of his son, the weak Henry III. 

Edward I. was engaged in cruel wars, both in Wales and 
Scotland, which wasted the people's money without any cor- 
responding advantage. 

Edward II. was deposed and murdered by his queen and her 
paramour Mortimer ; and, however great their crime, he was 
certainly unworthy and unable to control a fierce and turbu- 
lent people, already clamorous for their rights. These well- 



72 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

known facts are here stated to show the unsettled condition 
of things during the period when the Enghsh were being 
formed into a nation, the language established, and the ear- 
liest literary efforts made. Materials for a better organization 
were at hand in great abundance ; only proper master-builders 
were needed. We have seen that everything now betokened 
the coming of a new era, in State, Church, and literature. 

The monarch who came to the throne in 1327, one year 
before the birth of Chaucer, was worthy to be the usher of 
this new era to England : a man of might, of judgment, and 
of forecast ; the first truly English monarch in sympathy and 
purpose who had occupied the throne since the Conquest : 
liberal beyond all former precedent in religion, he sheltered 
Wiclif in his bold invectives, and paved the way for the later 
encroachments upon the papal suprem.acy. With the aid of 
his accomplished son, Edward the Black Prince, he rendered 
England illustrious by his foreign wars, and removed what 
remained of the animosity between Saxon and Norman. 

Reform in Religion. — We are so accustomed to refer 
the Reformation to the time of Luther in Germany, as the 
grand religious turning-point in modern history, that we are 
apt to underrate, if not to forget, the religious movement in 
this most important era of English history. Chaucer and 
Wiclif wrote nearly half a century before John Huss was 
burned by Sigismond : it was a century after that that Luther 
burned the Pope's decretals at Wittenberg, and still later that 
Henry VIIL threw off the papal dominion in England. But 
great crises in a nation's history never arrive without premoni- 
don ; — there are no moral earthquakes without premonitory 
throes, and sometimes these are more decisive and destrucdve 
than that which gives electric publicity. Such distinct signs 
appeared in the age of Chaucer, and the later history of the 
Church in England cannot be distinctly understood without 
a careful study of this period. 



CHAUCER. REFORMS IN RELIGION. 73 

It is well known that Chaucer was an adherent of John of 
Gaunt j that he and his great protector — perhaps with no 
very pious intents — favored the doctrines of Wiclif; that 
in the politico-religious disturbances in 1382, incident to the 
minority of Richard II., he was obliged to flee the country. 
But if we wish to find the most striking religious history of 
the age, we must seek it in the portraitures of religious char- 
acters and events in his Canterbury Tales. In order to a 
proper intelligence of these, let us look for a moment at the 
ecclesiastical condition of England at that time. Connected 
with much in doctrine and ritual worthy to be retained, and, 
indeed, still retained in the articles and liturgy of the Angli- 
can Church, there v/as much, the growth of ignorance and 
neglect, to be reformed. The Church of England had never 
had a real affinity with Rome. The gorgeous and sensual 
ceremonies which, in the indolent airs of the Mediterra- 
nean, were imposing and attractive, palled upon the taste of 
the more phlegmatic Englishmen. Institutions organized at 
Rome did not flourish in that higher latitude, and abuses 
"were currently discussed even before any plan was considered 
for reforming them. 

The Clergy. — The great monastic orders of St. Benedict, 
scattered throughout Europe, were, in the early and turbulent 
days, a most important aid and protection to Christianity. 
But by degrees, and as they were no longer needed, they had 
become corrupt, because they had become idle. The Clu- 
niacs and Cistercians, branches of the Benedictines, are repre- 
sented in Chaucer's poem by the monk and prioress, as types 
of bodies which needed reform. 

The Grandmontines, a smaller branch, were widely known 
for their foppery : the young m.onks painted their cheeks, and 
washed and covered their beards at night. The cloisters be- 
came luxurious, and sheltered, and, what is worse, sanctioned 
lewdness and debauchery. 
7 



74 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

There was a great difference indeed between the regular 
clergy, or those belonging to orders and monasteries, and the 
secular clergy or parish priests, who were far better ; and 
there was a jealous feud between them. There was a lament- 
able ignorance of the Scripture among the clergy, and gross 
darkness over the people. The paraphrases of Caedmon, the 
translations of Bede and Alfred, the rare manuscripts of the 
Latin Bible, were all that cast a faint ray upon this gloom. The 
people could not read Latin, even if they had books ; and the 
Saxon versions were almost in a foreign language. Thus, dis- 
trusting their religious teachers, thoughtful men began to long 
for an English version of that Holy Book which contains all the 
words of eternal life. And thus, while the people were be- 
coming more clamorous for instruction, and while Wiclif was 
meditating the great boon of a translated Bible, which, like a 
noonday sun, should irradiate the dark places and disclose the 
loathsome groups and filthy manifestations of cell and cloister, 
Chaucer was administering the wholesome medicine of satire 
and contempt. He displays the typical monk given up to 
every luxury, the costly black dress with fine fur edgings, 
the love-knot which fastens his hood, and his preference for 
pricking and hunting the hare, over poring into a stupid 
book in a cloister. 

The Friar and the Sompnour. — His satire extends also 
to the friar, who has not even that semblance of virtue which 
is the tribute of the hypocrite to our holy faith. He is not 
even the demure rascal conceived by Thomson in his Castle 
of Indolence : 

. . . the first amid the fry, 

A little round, fat, oily man of Go'd, 
Who had a roguish twinkle in his eye, 
"When a tight maiden chanced to trippen by, 



Which when observed, he shrunk into his mew, 
And straight would recollect his piety anew. 



CHAUCER. REFORMS IN RELIGION. ^^ 

But Chaucer's friar is a wanton and merry scoundrel, tak- 
ing every license, kissing the wives and talking love-talk to 
the girls in his wanderings, as he begs for his Church and his 
order. His hood is stuffed with trinkets to give them ; he is 
worthily known as the best beggar of his house ; his eyes 
alight with wine, he strikes his little harp, trolls out funny 
songs and love-ditties. Anon, his frolic over, he preaches 
to the collected crowd violent denunciations of the parish 
priest, within the very limits of his parish. The very princi- 
ples upon which these mendicant orders vv^ere established seem 
to be elements of evil. That they might be better than the 
monks, they had no cloisters and magnificent gardens, with 
little to do but enjoy them. Like our Lord, they were gen- 
erally without a place to lay their heads; they had neither 
purse nor scrip. But instead of sanctifying, the itinerary was 
their great temptation and final ruin. Nothing can be con- 
ceived better calculated to harden the heart and to destroy 
the fierce sensibilities of our nature than to be a beggar and 
a wanderer. So that in our retrospective glance, we may pity 
while we condemn " the friar of orders gray." With a del- 
icate irony in Chaucer's picture, is combined somewhat of a 
liking for this ''worthy limitour." ^ 

In the same category of contempt for the existing eccle- 
siastical system, Chaucer places the sompnour, or summoner 
to the Church courts. Of his fire-red face, scattered beard, 
and the bilious knobs on his cheeks, ''children were sore 
afraid." The friar, in his tale, represents him as in league 
with the devil, who carries him away. He is a drinker of 
strong wines, a conniver at evil for bribes : for a good sum 
he would teach " a felon " 

. . . not to have none awe 
In swiche a case of the archdeacon's curse. 

To him the Church system was nothing unless he could make 
profit of it. 

1 So called from his having a regular district or limit in which to beg. 



jS ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

The Pardonere. — Nor is his picture of the pardoner, or 
vender of indulgences, more flattering. He sells — to the great 
contempt of the poet — a piece of the Virgin's veil, a bit of 
the sail of St. Peter's boat, holy, pigges' bones, and with these 
relics he made more money in each parish in one day than 
the parson himself in two months. 

Thus taking advantage of his plot to ridicule these charac- 
ters, and to make them satirize each other — as in the rival 
stories of the sompnour and friar — he turns with pleasure from 
these betrayers of religion, to show us that there was a leaven 
of pure piety and devotion left. 

The Poor Parson. — With what eager interest does he 
portray the lovely character of \\i^ poor parson, the true shep- 
herd of his little flock, in the midst of false friars and luxuri- 
ous monks ! — poor himself, but 

.Riche was he of holy thought and work. 



That Crist es gospel tntely wolde preche. 
His parishers devoutly wolde teche. 

"Wide was his parish and houses fer asonder. 

But he left nought for ne rain no thonder. 

In sickness and in mischief to visite 

The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite. 

Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf, 

This noble example to his shepe he yaf. 

That first he wrought and' afterward he taught. 

Chaucer's description of the poor parson, which loses much 
by being curtailed, has proved to be a model for all poets 
who have drawn the likeness of an earnest pastor from that 
day to ours, among whom are Herbert, Cowper, Goldsmith, 
and Wordsworth ; but no imitation has equalled this beautiful 
model. When urged by the host. 

Tell us a fable anon, for cocke's bones. 



CHAUCER. — REFORMS IN RELIGION. 7/ 

he quotes St. Paul to Timothy as rebuking those who tell 
fables ; and, disclaiming all power in poetry, preaches them 
such a stirring discourse upon penance, contrition, confes- 
sion, and the seven deadly sins, with their remedies, as must 
have fallen like a thunderbolt upon this careless, motly crew; 
and has the additional value of giving us Chaucer's epitome 
of sound doctrine in that bigoted and ignorant age : and, 
eminently sound and holy as it is, it rebukes the lewdness of 
the other stories, and, in point of morality, neutralizes if it 
does not justify the lewd teachings of the work, or in other 
words, the immorality of the age. This is the parson's own 
view : his story is the last which is told, and he tells us, in the 
prologue to his sermon : 

To knitte up all this feste, and make an ende ; 
And Jesu for his grace wit me sende 
To showen you the way in this viage 
Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrimage, 
That hight Jerusalem celestial. 

In an addendum to this discourse, which brings the Can- 
terbury Tales to an abrupt close, and which, if genuine, as 
the best critics think it, was added some tune after, Chaucer 
takes shame to himself for his lewd stories, repudiates all his 
"translations and enditinges of worldly vanitees," and only 
finds pleasure in his translations of Boethius, his homilies and 
legends of the saints ; and, with words of penitence, he hopes 
that he shall be saved '' atte the laste day of dome." 

John Wiclif.^ — The subject of this early reformation so 
clearly set forth in the stories of Chaucer, cannot be fully 
illustrated without a special notice of Chaucer's great contem- 
porary and co-worker, John Wiclif. 

What Chaucer hints, or places in the mouths of his charac- 
ters, with apparently no very serious intent, Wiclif, himself 
a secular priest, proclaimed boldly and as of prime import- 
1 Spelled also Wycliffe, WiclifF, and Wyklyf. 

7* 



78 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

ance, first from his professor's chair at Oxford, and then 
from his forced retirement at Lutterworth, where he may well 
have been the model of Chaucer's poor parson. 

Wiclif was born in 1324, four years before Chaucer. The 
same abuses which called forth the satires of Langland and 
Chaucer upon monk and friar, and which, if unchecked, 
promised universal corruption, aroused the martyr-zeal of 
Wiclif; and similar reproofs are to be found in his work en- 
titled '' Objections to Friars," and in numerous treatises from 
his pen against many of the doctrines and practices of the 
Church. 

Noted for his learning and boldness, he was sent by Ed- 
ward III. one of an embassy to Bruges, to negotiate with the 
Pope's envoys concerning benefices held in England by for- 
eigners. There he met John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. 
This prince, whose immediate descendants were to play so 
prominent a part in later history, was the fourth son of Ed- 
ward III. By the death of the Black Prince, in 1376, and of 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in 1368, he became the oldest 
remaining child of the king, and the father of the man who 
usurped the throne of England and reigned as Henry IV. 
The influence of Lancaster was equal to his station, and he ex- 
tended his protection to Wiclif. This, combined with the 
support of Lord Percy, the Marshal of England, saved the 
reformer from the stake when he was tried before the Bishop 
of London on a charge of heresy, in 1377. He was again 
brought before a synod of the clergy at Lambeth, in 1378, 
but such was the favor of the populace in his behalf, and 
such, too, the weakness of the papal party, on account of a 
schism which had resulted in the election of two popes, 
that, although his opinions were declared heretical, he was 
not proceeded against. 

After this, although almost sick to death, he rose from what 
his enemies had hoped would be his death-bed, to ^' again 
declare the evil deeds of the friars." In 1381, he lectured 



CHAUCER. — REFORMS IN RELIGION. 79 

openly at Oxford against the doctrine of transubstantiation ; 
and for this, after a presentment by the Church — and a par- 
tial recantation, or explaining away — even the liberal king 
thought proper to command that he' should retire from the 
university. Thus, during his latter years, he lived in retire- 
ment at his little parish of Lutterworth, escaping the dangers 
of the troublous time, and dying — struck with paralysis at 
his chancel — in 1384, sixteen years before Chaucer. 

Translation of the Bible. — The labors of Wiclif which 
produced the most important results, were not his violent lec- 
tures as a reformer, but the translation of the Bible into Eng- 
lish, the very language of the common people, greatly to the 
wrath of the hierarchy and its political upholders. This, too, 
is his chief glory : as a reformer he went too fast and too far ; 
he struck fiercely at the root of authority, imperilling what 
was good, in his attack upon what was evil. In pulling up the 
tares he endangered the wheat, and from him, as a progenitor, 
came the Lollards, a fanatical, violent, and revolutionary sect. 

But his English Bible, the parent of the later versions, can- 
not be too highly valued. For the first time, English readers 
could search the whole Scriptures, and judge for themselves 
of doctrine and authority : there they could learn how far the 
traditions and commandments of men had encrusted and 
corrupted the pure word of truth. Thus the greatest impul- 
sion was given to a reformation in doctrine ; and thus, too, 
the exclusiveness and arrogance of the clergy received the 
first of many sledge-hammer blows which were to result in 
their confusion and discomfiture. 

''If," says Froude,^ ''the Black Prince had lived, or if 
Richard 11. had inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the 
ecclesiastical system would have been spared the misfortune 
of a longer reprieve." 

The Ashes of Wiclif. — The vengeance which Wiclif es- 

1 Am. ed., i. 94. 



80 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

caped during his life was wreaked upon his bones. In 1428, 
the Council of Constance ordered that if his bones could be 
distinguished from those of other, faithful people, they should 
*'be taken out of the ground and thrown far off from Chris- 
tian burial." On this errand the Bishop of Lincoln came 
with his officials to Lutterworth, and, finding them, burned 
them, and threw the ashes into the little stream called the 
Swift. Fuller, in his Church History, adds: "Thus this 
brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, 
Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean ; and 
thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which 
now is dispersed all the world over; " or, in the more care- 
fully selected words of an English laureate of modern days,^ 

. . . this deed accurst, 
An emblem yields to friends and enemies, 
How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified 
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed. 

1 Wordsworth, Ecc. Son., xvii. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CHAUCER, (continued.) — PROGRESS OF SOCIETY, AND OF 
LANGUAGE. 

Social Life. I His Death. Chaucer and Gower. 

Government. Historical Facts. Gower's Languuga, 

Chaucer's English. ' John Gower. Other Writers. 

Social Life. 

A FEW words must suffice to suggest to the student what 
may be learned, as to the condition of society in Eng- 
land, from the Canterbury Tales. 

All the portraits are representatives of classes. But an in- 
quiry into the social life of the period will be more systematic, 
if we look first at the nature and condition of chivalry, as it 
still existed, although on the eve of departure, in England. 
This is found in the portraits of certain of Chaucer's pilgrims 
— the knight, the squire, and the yeoman ; and in the special 
prologues to the various tales. The knight^ as the represent- 
ative of European chivalry, comes to us in name at least 
from the German forests with the irrepressible Teutons. 
Chivalry in its rude form, however, was destined to pass 
through a refining and modifying process, and to obtain its 
name in France. Its Norman characteristic is found in the 
young ecuyer or squire, of Chaucer, who aspires to equal 
his father in station and renown ; while the English type 
of the man-at arms (J' homme d'' armes) is found in their 
attendant yeoman, the tiers hat of English chivalry, whose 
bills and bows served Edward III. at Cressy and Poictiers, and, 
a little later, made Henry V. of England king of France in 

F 8i 



82 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

prospect, at Agincourt. Chivalry, in its palmy days, was an 
institution of great merit and power; but its humanizing pur- 
pose now accomplished, it was beginning to decline. 

What a speaking picture has Chaucer drawn of the knight, 
brave as a lion, prudent in counsel, but gentle as a woman. 
His deeds of valor had been achieved, not at Cressy and 
Calais, but — w4iat both chieftain and poet esteemed far nn- 
bier warfare — in battle with the infidel, at Alge^iras, in 
Poland, in Prussia, and Russia. Thrice had he fought with 
sharp lances in the lists, and thrice had he slain his foe ) yet 

he was 

Of his port as meke as is a mayde; 
He never yet no vilainie ne sayde 
In all his life unto ne manere wight, 
He was a very parfit gentil knight. 

The entire paradox of chivalry is here presented by the 
poet. For, though Chaucer's knight, just returned from the 
wars, is going to show his devotion to God and the saints by 
his pilgrimage to the hallowed shrine at Canterbury, when he 
is called upon for his story, his fancy flies to the old romantic 
mythology. Mars is his god of war, and Venus his mother 
of loves, and, by an anachronism quite common in that day, 
Palamon and Arcite are mediaeval knights trained in the 
school of chivalry, and aflame, in knightly style, with the 
light of love and ladies' eyes. These incongruities marked 
the age. 

Such was the flickering brightness of chivalry in Chaucer's 
time, even then growing dimmer and more fitful, and soon to 
"pale its ineffectual fire " in the light of a gl-owing civiliza- 
tion. Its better principles, which were those of truth, virtue, 
and holiness, were to remain; but its forms, ceremonies, and 
magnificence were to disappear. 

It is significant of social progress, and of the levelling in- 
fluence of Christianity, that common people should do their 
pilgrimage with community of interest as well as danger, and 



CHAUCER. — PROGRESS OF SOCIETY. 83 

in easy, tale-telling conference with those of higher station. 
The franklin, with white beard and red face, has been lord 
of the sessions and knight of the shire. The merchant, with 
forked beard and Flaundrish beaver hat, discourses learnedly 
of taxes and ship - money, and was doubtless drawn from 
an existing original, the type of a class. Several of the per- 
sonages belong to the guilds which were so famous in London, 

and 

Were alle y clothed in o livere I 

Of a solempne and grete frateniite. 

Government. — Closely connected with this social prog- 
ress, was the progress in constitutional government, the fruit 
of the charters of John and Henry III. After the assassina- 
tion of Edward II. by his queen and her paramour, there 
opened upon England a new historic era, when the bold and 
energetic Edward III. ascended the throne — an era reflected 
in the poem of Chaucer. The king, with Wiclif's aid, 
checked the encroachments of the Church. He increased 
the representation of the people in parliament, and — perhaps 
the greatest reform of all — he divided that body into two 
houses, the peers and the commons, giving great consequence 
to the latter in the conduct of the government, and intro- 
ducing that striking feature of English legislation, that no min- 
istry can withstand an opposition majority in the lower house; 
and another quite as important, that no tax should be im- 
posed without its consent. The philosophy of these great 
facts is to be found in the democratic spirit so manifest among 
the pilgrims ; a spirit tempered with loyalty, but ready, where 
their liberties were encroached upon, to act with legislative 
vigor, as well as individual boldness. 

Not so directly, but still forcibly, does Chaucer present 
the results of Edward's wars in France, in the status of the 
knight, squire, and yeoman, and of the English sailor, and in 
the changes introduced into the language and customs of the 
English thereby. 



84 ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Chaucer's English. — But we are to observe, finally, that 
Chaucer is the type of progress in the language, giving it 
himself the momentum which carried it forward with only 
technical modifications to the days of Spenser and the Virgin 
Queen. The House of Fame and other m.inor poems are 
written in the octosyllabic verse of the Trouveres, but the 
Canterbury Tales give us the first vigorous English handling 
of the decasyllabic couplet, or iambic pentameter, which was 
to become so polished an instrument afterward in the hands 
of Dryden and Pope. The English of all the poems is simple 
and vernacular. 

It is known that Dante had at first intended to compose the 
Divina Commedia in Latin. "But when," he said to the sym- 
pathizing Frate Ilario, *' I recalled the condition of the pres- 
ent age, and knew that those generous men for whom, in 
better days, these things were written, had abandoned {ahi 
dolor e^ the liberal arts into vulgar hands, I threw aside the 
delicate lyre which armed my flank, and attuned another more 
befitting the ears of moderns." It seems strange that he 
should have thus regretted what to us seems a noble and 
original opportunity of double creation — poem and language. 
What Dante thus bewailed was his real warrant for immor- 
tality. Had he written his great work in Latin, it would have 
been consigned, with the Italian latinity of the middle ages, 
to oblivion ; while his Tuscan still delights the ear of princes 
and lazzaroni. Professorships of the Divina Comm^edia are 
instituted in Italian universities, and men are considered ac- 
complished when they know it by heart. 

What Dante had done, not without murmuring, Chaucer 
did more cheerfully in England. Claimed by both universi- 
- ties as a collegian, perhaps without truth, he certainly was an 
educated man, and must have been sorely tempted by Latin 
hexameters ; but he knew his mission, and felt his power. 
With a master hand he moulded the language. He is re- 
proached for having introduced '^a wagon-load of foreign 



CHAUCER. PROGRESS OF SOCIETY. 85 

words," i. e. Norman words, which, although frowned upon 
by some critics, were greatly needed, were eagerly adopted, 
and constituted him the "well of English undefiled," as he 
was called by Spenser, It is no part of our plan to consider 
Chaucer^s language or diction, a special study which the reader 
can pursue for himself. Occleve, in his work '' De Regwiine 
Frincipiu?n,'^ calls him ''the honour of English tonge," 
" floure of eloquence," and ''universal fadir in science," 
and, above all, "the firste findere of our faire language." 
To Lydgate he was the " Floure of Poetes throughout all 
Bretaine." Measured by our standard, he is not always 
musical, "and," in the language of Dryden, "many of his 
verses are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole 
one; " but he must be measured by the standards of his age, 
by the judgment of his contemporaries, and by a thorough 
intelligence of the language as he found it and as he left it. 
Edward III., a practical reformer in many things, gave addi- 
tional importance to English, by restoring it in the courts of 
law, and administering justice to the people in their own 
tongue. When we read of the English kings of this early 
period, it is curious to reflect that these monarchs, up to the 
time of Edward I., spoke French as their vernacular tongue, 
while English had only been the mixed, corrupted language 
of the lower classes, which was now brought thus by king and 
poet into honorable consideration. 

His Death. — Chaucer died on the 25th of October, 1400, 
in his little tenement in the garden of St. Mary's Chapel, 
Westminster, and left his works and his fame to an evil and 
unappreciative age. His monument was not erected until 
one hundred and fifty -six years afterward, by Nicholas Brig- 
ham. It stands in the " poets' ■ corner " of Westminster 
Abbey, and has been the nucleus of that gathering-place of 
the sacred dust which once enclosed the great minds of Eng- 
land. The inscription, which justly styles him " Anglorum 
8 



86 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

vatester maximus," is not to be entirely depended upon as to 
the ''annus Domini," or ''tempora vitae," because of the 
turbulent and destructive reigns that had intervened — evil 
times for literary effort, and yet making material for literature 
and history, and producing that wonderful magician, the 
printing-press, and paper, by means of which the former 
things might be disseminated, and Chaucer brought nearer 
to us than to them. 

Historical Facts. — The year before Chaucer died, 
Richard II. was starved in his dungeon. Henry, the son of 
John of Gaunt, represented the usurpation of Lancaster, and 
the realm was convulsed with the revolts of rival aristocracy ; 
and, although Prince Hal, or Henry V., warred with entire 
success in France, and got the throne of that kingdom away 
from Charles VI., (the Insane,) he died leaving to his infant 
son, Henry VI., an inheritance which could not be secured. 
The rival claimant of York, Edward IV., had a strong party 
in the kingdom : then came the wars of the Roses; the mur- 
ders and treason of Richard III. ; the sordid valor of Henry 
VII. ; the conjugal affection of Henry VIII. ; the great reli- 
gious earthquake all over Europe, known as the Reformation ; 
constituting all together an epoch too stirring and unsettled 
to permit literature to flourish; an epoch which gave birth to 
no great poet or mighty master, but which contained only the 
seeds of things which were to germinate and flourish in a 
kindlier age. 

In closing this notice of Chaucer, it should be remarked that 
no English poet has been more successful in the varied delinea- 
tion of character, or in fresh and charming pictures of Nature. 
Witty and humorous, sententious and didactic, solemn and 
pathetic, he not only pleases the fancy, but touches the heart. 

John Gower. — Before entering upon the barren period 
from Chaucer to Spenser, however, there is one contempo- 



GOWER. S;^ 

rary of Chaucer whom we must not omit to mention ; for his 
works, although of little literary value, are historical signs of 
the times : this is /o/in Gower, .styled variously Sir John and 
Judge Gower, as he was very probably both a knight and a 
justice. He seems to owe most of his celebrity to his con- 
nection, however slight, with Chaucer ; although there is no 
doubt of his having been held in good repute by the literary 
patrons and critics of his own age. His fame rests upon three 
works, or rather three parts of one scheme — Speculmn Medi- 
taiitis, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis. The first of 
these, the mirror of one who meditates, was in French verse, 
and was, in the main, a treatise upon virtue and repentance, 
with inculcations to conjugal fidelity much disregarded at 
that time. This work has been lost. The Vox Clamantis^ 
or voice of one crying in the wilderness, is directly historical, 
being a chronicle, in Latin elegiacs, of the popular revolts of 
Wat Tyler in the time of Richard H., and a sermon on fatal- 
ism, which, while it calls for a reformation in tlie clergy, takes 
ground against Wiclif, his doctrines, and adherents. In the 
later books he discusses the military and the lawyers; and 
thus he is the voice of one crying, like the Baptist in the wil- 
derness, against existing abuses and for the advent of a better 
order. The Confessio A?na7itis, now principally known be- 
cause it contains a eulogium of Chaucer, which in his later 
editions he left out, is in English verse, and was composed at 
the instance of Richard 11. The general argument of this 
Lover's Confession is a dialogue between the lover and a priest 
of Venus, who, in the guise of a confessor, applies the brev- 
iary of the Church to the confessions of love. ^ The poem is 
interspersed with introductory or recapitulatory Latin verses. 

Chaucer and Gower. — That there was for a time a 

^ " The Joyous Science, as the profession of minstrelsy was termed, had 
its various ranks, like the degrees in the Church and in chivaliy." — 
Sir Walter Scott, {The Betrothed.) 



88 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

mutual admiration between Chaucer and Gower, is shown by 
their allusion to each other. In the penultimate stanza of the 
Troilus and Creseide, Chaucer calls him " O Morall Gower," 
an epithet repeated by Dunbar, Hawes, and other writers ; 
while in the Confessio A?nantis, Gower speaks of Chaucer as 
his disciple and poet, and alludes to his poems with great 
praise. That they were at any time alienated from each other 
has been asserted, but the best commentators agree in think- 
ing without sufficient grounds. 

The historical teachings of Gower are easy to find. He 
states truths without parable. His moral satires are aimed 
at the Church corruptions of the day, and yet are conserva- 
tive; and are taken, says Berthelet, in his dedication of the 
Confessio to Henry VUL, not only out of "poets, orators, 
historic writers, and philosophers, but out of the Holy Scrip- 
ture ' ' — the same Scripture so eloquently expounded by 
Chaucer, and translated by Wiclif. Again, Gower, with an 
eye to the present rather than to future fame, wrote in three 
languages — a tribute to the Church in his Latin, to the court 
in his French, and to the progressive spirit of the age in his 
English. The latter alone is now read, and is the basis of 
his fame. Besides three poems, he left, among his manu- 
scripts, fifty French sonnets, (cinquantes balades,) which were 
afterward printed by his descendant, Lord Gower, Duke of 
Sutherland. 

Gower' s Language. — Like Chaucer, Gower was a re- 
former in language, and was accused by the "severer ety- 
mologists of having corrupted the purity of the English by 
affecting to introduce so many foreign words and phrases ; ' ' 
but he has the tribute of Sir Philip Sidney (no mean praise) 
that Chaucer and himself were the leaders of a movement, 
which others have followed, " to beautifie our mother tongue," 
and thus the Confessio Amantis ranks as one of the formers of 
our language, in a day when it required much moral courage 



GOWER. 89 

to break away from the trammels of Latin and French, and 
at the same time to compel them to surrender their choicest 
treasures to the English. 

Gower was born in 1325 or 1326, and outlived Chaucer. 
It has been generally believed that Chaucer was his poetical 
pupil. The only evidence is found in the following vague 
expression of Gower in the Confessio Amantis : 

And greet well Chaucer when ye meet 
As my disciple and my poete. 
For in ihe flower of his youth, 
In sondry wise as he well coulh, 
Of ditties and of songes glade 
The which he for my sake made. 

It may have been but a patronizing phrase, warranted by 
Gower' s superior rank and station ; for to the modern critic 
the one is the uprising sun, and the other the pale star scarcely 
discerned in the sky. Gower died in 1408, eight years after 
his more illustrious colleague. 

Other Writers of the Period of Chaucer. 

John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, a Scottish poet, born about 1320 : 
wrote a poem concerning the deeds of King Robert I. in achieving the 
independence of Scotland. It is called Broite or Brute, and in it, in 
imitation of the English, he traces the Scottish royal lineage to Brutus. 
Although by no means equal to Chaucer, he is far superior to any other 
English poet of the time, and his language is more intelligible at the 
present day than that of Chaucer or Gower. Sir Walter Scott has bor- 
rowed from Barbour's poem in his " Lord of the Isles." 

Blind Harry — name unknown: wrote the adventures of Sir William 
Wallace, about 1460. 

James I. of Scotland, assassinated at Perth, in 1437. He wrote " The 
Kings Quhair," (Quire or Book,) describing the progress of his attach- 
ment to the daughter of the Earl of Somerset, while a prisoner in Eng- 
land, during the reign of Henry IV. 

Thomas Occleve, flourished about 1420. His principal work is in Latin; 
De Regimine Principum, (concerning the government of princes.) 
8* 



go ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

John Lydgate, flourished about 1430: wrote Mashs and Mummeries, and 

nine books of tragedies translated from Boccaccio. 
Robert Henryson, flourished about 1430: Robin and Makyne, a pastoral; 

and a continuation of Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide, entitled " The 

Testament of Fair Creseide." 
William Dunbar, died about 1520: the greatest of Scottish poets, called 

"The Chaucer of Scotland." He wrote " The Thistle and the Rose," 

"The Dance," and "The Golden Targe." 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BARREN PERIOD BETWEEN CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Greek Literature. | Skelton. I Sir Thomas More. 

Invention of Printing. Caxton. Wyatt, i Utopia, and other Works. 

Contemporary History. ' Surrey. ' Other Writers. 

The Study of Greek Literature. 

HAVING thus mentioned the writers whom we regard 
as belonging to the period of Chancer, although some 
of them, like Henryson and Dunbar, flourished at the close 
of the fifteenth century, we reach those of that literary epoch 
which may be regarded as the transition state between Chaucer 
and the age of Elizabeth: an epoch which, while it produced 
no great literary work, and is irradiated by no great name, 
was, however, a time of preparation for the splendid advent 
of Spenser and Shakspeare. 

Incident to the .dangers which had» so long beset the East- 
ern or Byzantine Empire, which culminated in the fall of 
Constantinople — and to the gradual but steady progress of 
Western Europe in arts and letters, which made it a welcome 
refuge for the imperilled learning of the East — Greek letters 
came like a fertilizing flood across the Continent into England. 
The philosophy of Plato, the power of the Athenian drama, 
and the learning of the Stagyrite, were a new impulse to lit- 
erature. Before the close of the fifteenth century, Greek was 
taught at Oxford, and men marvelled as they read that 
''musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the ob- 
jects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy," 
a knowledge of which had been before entirely lost in the 

91 



92 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

West. Thus was perfected what is known as the revival of 
letters, when classical learning came to enrich and modify 
the national literatures, if it did temporarily retard the ver- 
nacular progress. The Humanists carried the day against the 
Obscurantists ; and, as scholarship had before consisted in a 
thorough knowledge of Latin, it now also included a knowl- 
edge of Greek, which presented noble works of poetry, elo- 
quence, and philosophy, and gave us a new idiom for the 
terminologies of science. 

Invention of Printing. — Nor was this all. This great 
wealth of learning would have still remained a dead letter to 
the multitude, and, in the main, a useless treasure even to 
scholars, had it not been for a simple yet marvellous inven- 
tion of the same period. In Germany, some obscure me- 
chanics, at Harlem, at Mayence, and at Strasbourg, were at 
work upon a machine which, if perfected, should at once ex- 
tend letters a hundred-fold, and by that process revolutionize 
literature. The writers before, few as they were, had been 
almost as numerous as the readers ; hereafter the readers were 
to increase in a geometrical proportion, and each great writer 
should address millions. Movable types, first of wood and 
then of metal, were made, the latter as early as 1441. Schoef- 
fer, Guttenberg, and Faust brought them to such perfection 
that books were soon printed and issued in large numbers. 
But so slowly did the art travel, partly on account of want of 
communication, and partly because it was believed to partake 
of necromancy, and partly, too, from the phlegmatic char- 
acter of the English people, that thirty years elapsed before 
it was brought into England. The art of printing came in 
response to the demand of an age of progress : it was needed 
before ; it was called for by the increasing number of readers, 
and when it came it multiplied that number largely. 

William Caxton. — That it did at last come to England was 



THE BARREN PERIOD. 93 

due to William Caxton, a native of Kent, and by vocation a 
mercer, who imported costly continental fabrics into England, 
and with them some of the new^ books now being printed in 
Holland. That he was a man of some eminence is shown by 
his having been engaged by Edw^ard IV. on a mission to the 
Duke of Burgundy, with power to negotiate a treaty of com- 
merce ; that he was a person of skill and courtesy is evinced 
by his being retained in the service of Margaret, Duchess of 
York, when she married Charles, Duke of Burgundy. While 
in her train, he studied printing on the Continent, and is said 
to have printed some books there. At length, when he was 
more than sixty years old, he returned to England ; and, in 
1474, he printed what is supposed to be the first book printed 
in ElS^gland, "The Game and Piaye of the Chesse." Thus 
it was a century after Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales 
that printing was introduced into England. Caxton died in 
1 49 1, but his workmen continued to print, and among them 
Wynken de Worde stands conspicuous. Among the earlier 
works printed by Caxton were the Canterbury Tales, the 
Book of Fame, and the Troilus and Creseide of Chaucer. 

Contemporary History. — It will be remembered that this 
w^as the stormy period of the Wars of the Roses. The long 
and troubled reign of Henry VI. closed in sorrow in 147 1. 
The'titular crown of France had been easily taken from him 
by Charles VII. and Joan of Arc ; and although Richard of 
York, the great-grandson 'of Edward III., had failed in his 
attempts upon the English throne, yet /lis son Edw^ard, after- 
ward the Fourth, Avas successful. Then came the patricide 
of Clarence, the accession and cruelties of Richard III., the 
battle of Bosworth, and, at length, the union of the two 
houses in the persons of Henry VII. (Henry Tudor of Lan- 
caster) and Elizabeth of York. Thus the strife of the suc- 
cession was settled, and the realm had rest to reorganize and 
start anew in its historic career. 



94 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

The weakening of the aristocracy by war and by execution 
gave to the crown a power before unknown, and made it a 
fearful coigne of vantage for Henry VIII., whose accession 
was in 1509. People and parliament were alike subservient", 
and gave their consent to the unjust edicts and arbitrary cru- 
elties of this terrible tyrant. 

In his reign the old English quarrel between Church and 
State — which during the civil war had lain dormant — again 
rose, and was brought to a final issue. It is not unusual to 
hear that the English Reformation grew out of the ambition 
of a libidinous monarch. This is a coincidence rather than 
a cause. His lust and his marriages would have occurred had 
there been no question of Pope or Church ; conversely:, had 
there been a continent king upon the throne, the great political 
and religious events would have happened in almost the same 
order and manner. That "knock of a king" and "incura- 
ble wound ' ' prophesied by Piers Plowman were to come. 
Henry only seized the opportunity afforded by his ungodly 
passions as the best pretext, where there were many, for setting 
the Pope at defiance ; and the spirit of reformation so early 
displayed, and awhile dormant from circumstances, and now 
strengthened by the voice of Luther, burst forth in England. 
There was little demur to the suppression of the monasteries ; 
the tomb of St. Thomas a Becket was desecrated amidst the 
insulting mummeries of the multitude ; and if Henry still 
burned Lutherans — because he could not forget that he 
had in earlier days denounced Luther — if he still maintained 
the six bloody articles^ — his reforming spirit is shown in the 
execution of Fisher and More, by the anathema which he 
drew upon himself from the Pope, and by Henry's retaliation 
upon the friends and kinsmen of Cardinal Pole, the papal 
legate. 

list, the real presence; 2d, celibacy; 3d, monastic vows; 4th, low 
mass; 5th, auricular confession; 6th, withholding the cup from the 
laity. ♦ 



THE BARREN PERIOD. 95 

Having thus briefly glanced at the history, we return to the 
literary products, all of which reflect more or less of the his- 
toric age, and by their paucity and poverty indicate the exist- 
ence of the causes so unfavorable to literary efl"ort. This 
statement will be partially understood when we mention, as 
the principal names of this period, Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, 
and Sir Thomas More, men whose works are scarcely known 
to the ordinary reader, and which are yet the best of the time. 

Skelton. — John Skelton, poet, priest, and bufl"oon, was 
born about the year 1460, and educated at what he calls 
"Alma parens, O Cantabrigensis." Tutor to Prince Henry, 
afterward Henry VIH., he could boast, "The honour of 
England I lernyd to spelle." That he was highly esteemed 
in his day we gather from the eulogium of Erasmus, then for 
a short time professor of Greek at Oxford: "Unum Britta- 
nicarum literarum lumen et decus." By another contempo- 
rary he is called the "inventive Skelton." As a priest he 
was not very holy ; for, in a day when the marriage of the 
clergy was worse than their incontinence, he contracted a 
secret marriage. He enjoyed for a time the patronage of Wol- 
sey, but afterward joined his 'enemies and attacked him vio- 
lently. He was laureated : this does not mean, as at present, 
that he was poet laureate of England, but that he received 
a degree of which that was the title. 

His works are direct delineations of the age. Among these 
are "monodies" upon Kynge Edwarde the forthe, and the 
Earle of Northumberlande. He corrects for Caxton "The 
boke of the Eneydos composed by Vyrgyle." He enters 
heartily into numerous literary quarrels ; is a reformer to the . 
extent of exposing ecclesiastical abuses in his Colin Clout; 
and scourges the friars and bishops alike ; and in this work, 
and his " Why come ye not to Courte?" he makes a special 
target of Wolsey, and the pomp and luxury of his household. 



96 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

He calls him '' Mad Amelek, like to Mamelek " (Mameluke), 

and speaks 

Of his wretched original 

And his greasy genealogy. 

He came from the sank (blood) royal 

That was cast out of a butcher's stall. 

This was the sorest point upon which he could touch the 
great cardinal and prime minister of Henry VIII. 

Historically considered, one work of Skelton is especially 
valuable, for it places him among the first of English drama- 
tists. The first effort of the modern drama was the miracle 
play ; then came the morality ; after that the interlude ^ which 
was soon merged into regular tragedy and comedy. Skelton 's 
'' Magnyfycence," which he calls "a goodly interlude and a 
merie," is, in reality, a morality play as well as an interlude, 
and marks the opening of the modern drama in England. 

The peculiar verse of Skelton, styled skeltonical, is a sort 
of English anacreontic. One example has been given ; take, 
as another, the following lampoon of Philip of Spain and the 
armada : 



A skeltonicall salutation 
Or condigne gratulation 
And just vexation 
Of the Spanish nation, 
That in bravado 
Spent many a crusado 
In setting forth an armado 
England to invado. 



Who but Philippus, 

That seeketh to nip us, 

To rob us and strip us. 

And then for to whip us, 

Would ever have meant 

Or had intent 

Or hither sent 

Such strips of charge, etc., etc. 



T<- varies from five to six syllables, with several consecutive 
rhymes. 

His ^'Merie Tales" are a series of short and generally 
broad stories, suited to the vulgar taste: no one can read them 
without beuTg struck with the truly historic character of the 
subjects and the handling, and without moralizing upon the 
age which they describe. Skelton, a contemporary of the 



THE BARREN PERIOD. 9/ 

French Rabelais, seems to us a weak English portrait of that 
great author; likejiim a priest, a buffoon, a satirist, and a 
lampooner, but unlike him in that he has given us no English 
Gargantua and Paniagruel to illustrate his age. 

Wyatt. — The next writer who claims our attention is Sir 
Thomas Wyatt, the son of Sir Henry Wyatt. He was born 
in 1503, and educated at Cambridge. Early a courtier, he 
was imperilled by his attachment to Anne Boleyn, conceded, 
if not quite Platonic, yet to have never led him to criminality. 
Several of his poems were inspired by her charms. The one 
best known begins — 

What word is that that changeth not, 
Though it be turned and made in twain ? 
It is mine Anna, God it wot, etc. 

That unfortunate queen — to possess whose charms Henry 
Vni. had repudiated Catherine of Arragon, and who was 
soon to be brought to the block after trial on the gravest 
charges — Avhich we do not think substantiated — was, how- 
ever, frivolous and imprudent, and liked such impassioned 
attentions — indeed, may be said to have suffered for them. 

Wyatt was styled by Camden *'splendide doctus," but 
his learning, however honorable to him, was not of much 
benefit to the world ; for his works are few, and most of them 
amatory — ''songs and sonnets" — full of love and lovers : 
as a makeweight, in foro conscientice, he paraphrased the 
penitential Psalms. An excellent comment this on the age 
of Henry VHI., when the monarch possessed with lust at- 
tempted the reformation of the Church. That Wyatt looked 
with favor upon the Reformation is indicated by one of his 
remarks to the king: ''Heavens! that a man cannot repent 
him of his sins without the Pope's leave ! " Imprisoned sev- 
eral times during the reign of Henry, after that monarch's 
death he favored the accession of Lady Jane Grey, and, with 
9 G 



98 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Other of her adherents, was executed for high treason on the 
nth of April, 1554. We have spoken of the spirit of the 
age. Its criticism was no better than its literature; for 
Wyatt, whom few read but the literary historian, was then 
considered 

A hand that taught what might he said in rhyme, 
That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit." 

The glory of Chaucer's wit remains, while Wyatt is chiefly 
known because he was executed. 

Surrey. — A twin star, but with a brighter lustre, was 
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a writer whose works are 
remarkable for purity of thought and refinement of language. 
Surrey was a gay and wild young fellow — distinguished in 
the tournament which celebrated Henry's marriage with Anne 
of Cleves; now in prison for eating meat in Lent, and break- 
ing windows at night ; again we find him the English mar- 
shal when Henry invaded France in 1544. He led a restless 
life, was imperious and hot-tempered to the king, and at 
length quartered the king's arms with his own, thus assuming 
royal rights and imperilling the king's dignity. On this 
charge, which was, however, only a pretext, he was arrested 
and executed for high treason in 1547, before he was thirty 
years old. 

Surrey is the greatest poetical name of Henry the Eighth's 
reign, not so much for the substance of his poems as for their 
peculiar handling. He is claimed as the introducer of blank 
verse — the iambic pentameter without rhyme, occasionally 
broken for musical effect by a change in the place of the cae- 
sural pause. His translation of the Fourth Book of the ^neid, 
imitated perhaps from the Italian version of the Cardinal de 
Medici, is said to be the first specimen of blank verse in 
English. How slow its progress was is proved by Johnson^'s 
remarks upon the versification of Milton.^ Thus in his blank 

* " The Earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's books 



THE BARREN PERIOD. 99 

verse Surrey was the forerunner of Milton, and in his 
rh)a-ned pentameter couplet one of the heralds of Dryden and 
Pope. 

Sir Thomas More. — In a bird.'s-eye view of literature, 
the division into poetry and prose is really a distinction with- 
out a difference. They are the same body in different cloth- 
ing, at labor and at festivity — in the working suit and in the 
court costume. With this remark we usher upon the literary 
scene Thomas More, in many respects one of the most re- 
markable men of his age — scholar, jurist, statesman, gentle- 
man, and Christian ; and, withal, a martyr to his principles 
of justice and faith. In a better age, he would have retained 
the highest honors : it is not to his discredit that in that reign 
he was brought to the block. * 

He was born in 1480. A very precocious youth, a distin- 
guished career was predicted for him. He was greatly favored 
by Henry VIII., who constantly visited him at Chelsea, hang- 
ing upon his neck, and professing an intensity of friendship 
which, it is said, More always distrusted. He was the friend 
and companion of Erasmus during the residence of that dis- 
tinguished man in EnglandT More was gifted as an orator, 
and rose to the distinction of speaker of the House of Com- 
mons ; was presented with the great seal upon the dismissal 
of Wolsey, and by his learning, his affability, and his kind- 
ness, became the most popular, as he seemed to be the most 
prosperous man in England. But, the test of Henry's friend- 
ship and of More's principles came when the king desired his 
concurrence in the divorce of Catherine of Arragon. He re- 
signed the great seal rather than sign the marriage articles of 

without rhyme, and, besides our tragedies, a few short poems had appeared 
in blank verse. . . . These petty performances cannot be supposed to have 
much influenced Milton ; . . . finding blank verse easier than rhyme, he 
was desirous of persuading himself that it is better." — Lives of the Poets 
— Milton. 



lOO ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Anne Boleyn, and would not take the oath as to the lawful- 
ness of that marriage. Henry's kindness turned to fury, and 
More was a doomed man. A devout Romanist, he would 
not violate his conscience by submitting to the act of su- 
premacy which made Henry the head of the Church, and so 
he was tried for high treason, and executed on the 6th of 
July, 1535. There are few scenes more pathetic than his 
last interview with his daughter Margaret, in the Tower, and 
no death more calmly and beautifully grand than his. He 
kissed the executioner and forgave him. '^Thou art," said 
he, ''to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive: pluck 
up thy spirit man, and be not afraid to do thine office." 

Utopia. — His great work, and that which best illustrates 
the history of the age, rs his Utopia, (ov toTto^, not a place.) 
Upon an island discovered by a companion of Vespuccius, 
he established an imaginary commonwealth, in which every- 
body was good and everybody happy. Purely fanciful as is 
his Utopia, and impossible of realization as he knew it to be 
while men are what they are, and not what they ought to 
be, it is manifestly a satire on that age, for his republic 
shunned English errors, and practised social virtues which 
were not the rule in England. 

Although More wrote against Luther, and opposed Henry's 
Church innovations, we are struck with his Utopian claim for 
great freedom of inquiry on all subjects, even religion; and 
the bold assertion that no man should be punished for his 
religion, because ''a man cannot make himself believe any- 
thing he pleases," as Henry's six bloody articles so fearfully 
asserted he must. The Utopia was written in Latin, but soon 
translated into English. We use the adjective Utopian as 
meaning wildly fanciful and impossible : its true meaning is 
of high excellence, to be striven for — in a word, human per- 
fection. 



THE BARREN PERIOD. lOI 

Other Works. — More also wrote, in most excellent Eng- 
lish prose, a history of the princes, Edward V. and his brother 
Richard of York, who were murdered in the Tower; and a 
history of their murderer and uncle, Richard III. This 
Richard — and we need not doubt his accuracy of statement, 
for he was born five years before Richard fell at Bos worth — 
is the short, deformed youth, with his left shoulder higher 
than the right ; crafty, stony-hearted, and cruel, so strikingly 
presented by Shakspeare, who takes More as his authority. 
*' Not letting (sparing) to kiss whom he thought to kill . . . 
friend and foe was indifferent where his advantage grew ; he 
spared no man's death whose life withstood his purpose. He 
slew, with his own hands. King Henry VI., being a prisoner 
in the Tower." 

With the honorable name of More we leave this unpro- 
ductive period, in which there was no great growth of any 
kind, but which was the planting-time, when seeds were sown 
that were soon. to germinate and bloom and astonish the world. 
The times remind us of the dark saying in the Bible, " Out of 
the eater came forth meat ; out of the strong came sweetness," 

The art of printing had so increased the number of books, 
that public libraries began to be collected, and, what is bet- 
ter, to be used. The universities enlarged their borders, new 
colleges were added to Cambridge and Oxford ; new found- 
ations laid. The note of preparation betokened a great ad- 
vent ; the scene was fully prepared, and the actors would not 
be wanting. 

Upon the death of Henry VIII., in 1547, Edward VI., his 
son by Jane Seymour, ascended the throne, and during his 
minority a protector was appointed in the person of his 
mother's brother, the Earl of Hertford, afterward Duke of 
Somerset. Edward was a sickly youth of ten years old, but 
his reign is noted for the progress of reform in the Church, 
and especially for the issue of the Book of Common Prayer, 
which must be considered of literary importance, as, although 

' 9* 



102 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

with decided modifications, and an interruption in its use 
during the brief reign of Mary, it has been the ritual of wor- 
ship in the Anglican Church ever since. It superseded the 
Latin services — of which it was mainly a translation rear- 
ranged and modified — finally and completely, and contain- 
ing, as it does, the whole body of doctrine, it was the first 
clear manifesto of the creeds and usages of that Church, and 
a strong bond of union among its members. 

Other Writers of the Period. 

Thomas Tusser, 1527-1580: published, in 1557, "A Hundreth Good 
Points of Husbandrie," afterward enlarged and called, "Five Hundred 
Points of Good Husbandrie, united to as many of Good Huswiferie ; " 
especially valuable as a picture of rural life and labor in that age. 

Alexander Barklay, died 1552: translated into English poetiy the Ship 
of Fools, by Sebastian Brandt, of Basle. 

Reginald Pecock, Bishop of St. Asaph and of Chichester : published, in 
1449, " The Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy." He at- 
tacked the Lollards, but was suspected of heresy himself, and deprived 
of his bishopric. 

John Fisher, 1459-1535 : was made Bishop of Rochester in 1 504; opposed 
the Reformation, and refused to approve of Henry's divorce from Cath- 
erine of Arragon; was executed by the king. The Pope sent him a 
cardinal's hat while he was lying under sentence. Henry said he would 
not leave him a head to put it on. Wrote principally sermons and the- 
ological treatises. 

Hugh Latimer, 1472-1555: was made Bishop of Worcester in 1535. An 
ardent supporter of the Reformation, who, by a rude, homely eloquence, 
influenced many people. He was burned at the stake at the age of 
eighty-three, in company with Ridley, Bishop of London, by Queen 
Mary. His memorable words to his fellow-martyr are : "We shall this 
day light a candle in England which, I trust, shall never be put out." 

John Leland, or Laylonde, died 1552: an eminent antiquary, who, by 
order of Henry VHL, examined, con a7?iore, the records of libraries, 
cathedrals, priories, abbeys, colleges, etc., and has left a vast amount of 
curious antiquarian learning behind him. He became insane by reason 
of the pressure of his labors. 

George Cavendish, died 1557 : wrote "The Negotiations of Woolsey, the 
Great Cardinal of England," etc., which was republished as the " Life 



THE BARREN PERIOD. IO3 

and Death of Thomas Woolsey." From this, it is said, Shakspeare 
drew in writing his "Henry VIII." 
Roger Ascham, 151-5-1568: specially famous as the successful instructor 
of Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey, whom he was able to imbue with a 
taste for classical learning. He wrote a treatise on the use of the bow, 
called Toxophilus, and The Schoolmaster, which contains many excel- 
lent and judicious suggestions, worthy to be carried out in modern ed- 
ucation. It was highly praised by Dr. Johnson. It was written for 
the use of the children of Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. 



CHAPTER XL 

SPENSER AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. 



The Great Change. 
Edward VI. and Mary. 
Sidney. 



Edmund Spenser — Shep- 
herd's Calendar. 
His Great Work, 



The Arcadia. 
Defence of Poesy. 
Astrophel and Stella. 
Gabriel Harvey. 

The Great Change. 

WITH what joy does the traveller in the desert, after a 
day of scorching glow and a night of breathless heat, 
descry the distant trees which mark the longed-for well-spring 
in the emerald oasis, which seems to beckon with its branch- 
ing palms to the converging caravans, to come and slake their 
fever-thirst, and escape from the threatening sirocco ! 

The pilgrim arrives at the caravansery : not the long, low 
stone house, unfurnished and bare, which former experience 
had led him to expect ; but a splendid palace. He dis- 
mounts ; maidens purer and more beautiful than fabled houris, 
accompanied by slaves bearing rare dishes and goblets of 
crusted gold, offer him refreshments : perfumed baths, couches 
of down, soft and soothing music are about him in delicious 
combination. Surely he is dreaming ; or if this be real, were 
not the burning sun and the sand of the desert, the panting 
camel and the dying horse of an hour ago but a dream? 

Such is not an overwrought illustration of English literature 
in the long, barren reach from Chaucer to Spenser, as com- 
pared with the freshness, beauty, and grandeur of the geniuses 
which adorned Elizabeth's court, and tended to make her 
reign as illustrious in history as the age of Pericles, of Augustus, 

104 



SPENSER AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. IO5 

or of Louis XIV. Chief among these were Spenser and Shak- 
speare. As the latter has been truly characterized as not for 
an age, but for all time, the former may be more justly con- 
sidered as the highest exponent and representative of that 
period. The Faerie Queene, considered only as a grand 
heroic poem, is unrivalled in its pictures of beautiful women, 
brave men, daring deeds, and Oriental splendor; but in its 
allegorical character, it is far more instructive, since it enu- 
merates and illustrates the cardinal virtues which should make 
up the moral character of a gentleman : add to this, that it is 
teeming with history, and in its manifold completeness we 
have, if not an oasis in the desert, more truly the rich verge 
of the fertile country which bounds that desert, and which 
opens a more beautiful road to the literary traveller as he 
comes down the great highway: wearied and worn with the 
factions and barrenness of the fifteenth century, he fairly revels 
with delight in the fertility and variety of the Elizabethan 
age. 

Edward and Mary. — In pursuance of our plan, a few 
preliminary words will present the historic features of that 
age. In the year 1547, Henry VIII., the royal Bluebeard, 
sank, full of crimes and beset with deathbed horrors, into a 
dishonorable grave. -^ A poor, weak youth, his son, Edward 
VI., seemed sent by special providence on a short mission of 
six years, to foster the reformed faith, and to give the land a 
brief rest after the disorders and crimes of his father's reign. 

After Edward came Queen Mary, in 1553 — the bloody 
Mary, who violently overturned the Protestant system, and 
avenged her mother against her father by restoring the Papal 

^ From this dishonor Mr. Fronde's researches among the statute books 
have not been able to lift him, for he gives system to horrors which w'eve 
before beUeved to be eccentric; and, while he fails to justify the monarch, 
implicates a trembling parliament and a servile ministry, as if their shar- 
ing the crime made it less odious. 



I06 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

sway and making heresy the unpardonable sin. It may seem 
strange, in one breath to denounce Henry and to defend his 
daughter Mary ; but severe justice, untempered with sympathy, 
has been meted out to her. We acknowledge all her recorded 
actions, but. let it be remembered that she was the child 
of a basely repudiated mother, Catherine of Arragon, who, 
as the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was a 
Catholic of the Catholics. Mary had been declared illegiti- 
mate ; she was laboring under an incurable disease, affecting 
her mind as well as her body ; she was the wife of Philip II. 
of Spain, a monster of iniquity, whose .sole virtue — if we may 
so speak — was his devotion to his Church. She inherited 
her bigotry from her mother, and strengthened it by her mar- 
riage ; and she thought that in persecuting heretics she was 
doing God service, which would only be a perfect service 
when she should have burned out the bay-tree growth of 
heresy and restored the ancient faith. 

Such were her character and condition as displayed to the 
English world ; but we know, in addition, that she bore her 
sufferings with great fortitude ; that, an unloved wife, she was 
a pattern of conjugal affection and fidelity ; that she was a 
dupe in the hands of designing men and a fierce propaganda; 
and we may infer that, under different circumstances and with 
better guidance, the real elements of her character would 
have made her a good monarch and presented a far more 
pleasing historical portrait. 

Justice demands that we should say thus much, for even 
with these qualifications, the picture of her reign is very dark 
and painful. After a sad and bloody rule of five years — a 
reign of worse than Roman proscription, or later French ter- 
rors — she died without leaving a child. There was but one 
voice as to her successor. Delirious shouts of joy were heard 
throughout the land: ''God save Queen Elizabeth!" ''No 
more burnings at Smithfield, nor beheadings on Tower green ! 
No more of Spanish Philip and his pernicious bigots ! Toler- 



SPENSER AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. 10/ 

ation, freedom, light P' The people of England were ready 
for a golden age, and the golden age had come. 

Elizabeth. — And who was Elizabeth? The daughter of 
the dishonored Anne Boleyn, who had been declared illegit- 
imate, and set out of the succession ; who had been kept in 
ward ; often and long in peril of her life ; destined, in all 
human foresight, to a life of sorrow, humiliation, and ob- 
scurity; her head had been long lying "'twixt axe and 
crown," with more probability of the former than the latter. 

Wonderful was the change. With her began a reign the 
like of which the world had never seen ; a great and brilliant 
crisis in English history, in which the old order passed 
away and the new was inaugurated. It was like a new his- 
toric fulfilment of the prophecy of Virgil : 

Magnus . . . saeclorum nascitur ordo ; 
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Salurnia regna. 

Her accession and its consequences were like the scenes in 
some fairy tale. She was indeed a Faerie Queene, as she 
was designated in Spenser's magnificent allegory. Around 
her clustered a new chivalry, whose gentle deeds were wrought 
not only with the sword, but with the pen. Stout heart, stal- 
wart arm, and soaring imagination, all wore her colors and 
were amply rewarded by her smiles ; and whatever her per- 
sonal faults — and they were many — as a monarch, she was 
not unworthy of their allegiance. 

Sidney. — Before proceeding to a consideration of Spen- 
ser's great poem, it is necessary to mention two names inti- 
mately associated with him and with his fame, and of special 
interest in the literary catalogue of Queen Elizabeth's court, 
brilliant and numerous as that catalogue was. 

Among the most striking characters of this period was Sir 
Philip Sidney, whose brief history is full of romance and 



I08 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

attraction ; not so much for what he did as for what he person- 
ally was, and gave promise of being. Whenever we seek for 
an historical illustration of the gentleman, the figure of Sidney- 
rises in company with that of Bayard, and claims distinction. 
He was born at Pennshurst in Kent, on the 29th of Novem- 
ber, 1554. He was the nephew of Robert Dudley, Earl of 
Leicester, the chief favorite of the queen. Precocious in 
grace, dignity, and learning, Sidney was educated both at 
Oxford and Cambridge, and in his earliest manhood he was 
diprud' homme, handsome, elegant, learned, and chivalrous; a 
statesman, a diplomatist, a soldier, and a poet; ''not only 
of excellent wit, but extremely beautiful of face. Delicately 
chiselled Anglo-Norman features, smooth, fair cheek, a faint 
moustache, blue eyes, and a mass of amber-colored hair," 
distinguished him among the handsome men of a court where 
handsome men were in great request. 

He spent some time at the court of Charles IX. of France 
— which, however, he left suddenly, shocked and disgusted 
by the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve — and extended 
his travels into Germany. The queen held him in the highest 
esteem — although he was disliked by the Cecils, the constant 
rivals of the Dudleys ; and when he was elected to the crown 
of Poland, the queen refused him permission to accept, be- 
cause she would not lose " the brightest jewel of her crown — 
her Philip," as she called him to distinguish him from her 
sister Mary's Philip, Philip H. of Spain. A few words will 
finish his personal story. He went, by the queen's permis- 
sion, with his uncle Leicester to the Low Countries, then 
struggling, with Elizabeth's assistance, against Philip of 
^pain. There he was made governor of Flushing — the key 
to the navigation of the North Seas — with the rank of gen- 
eral of horse. In a skirmish near Zutphen (South Fen) he 
served as a volunteer; and, as he was going into action fully 
armed, seeing his old friend Sir William Pelham without 
cuishes upon his thighs, prompted by mistaken but chivalrous 



SPENSER AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. IO9 

generosity, he took off his own, and had his thigh broken by 
a musket-ball. This was on the 2d of October, 1586, N. S. 
He lingered for twenty days, and then died at Arnheim, 
mourned by all. The story of his passing the untasted water 
to the wounded soldier, will never become trite: '^.This 
man's necessity is greater than mine," was an immortal 
speech which men like to quote. ^ 

Sidney's Works. — But it is as a literary character that 
we must consider Sidney ; and it is worthy of special notice 
that his works could not have been produced in any other 
age. The principal one is the Arcadia. The name, which 
was adopted from Sannazzaro, would indicate a pastoral — 
and this was eminently the age of English pastoral — but it is 
in reality not such. It presents indeed sylvan scenes, but they 
are in the life of a knight. It is written in prose, interspersed 
with short poems, and was inspired by and dedicated to his 
literary sister Mary, the Countess of Penibroke. It was called 
indeed the Countess of Pejnbroke' s Arcadia. There are many 
scenes of great beauty and vigor ; there is m^uch which re- 
presents the manners of the age, but few persons can now 
peruse it with pleasure, because of the peculi^.r affectations of 
style, and its overload of ornament. There grew naturally in 
the atmosphere of the court of a regnant queen, an affected, 
flattering, and inflated language, known to us as Euphuism. 
Of this John Lilly has been called the father, but we really 
only owe to him the nam.e, which is taken from his two works, 
Euphues, Anatomy of Wit, and Euphues and his England. 
The speech of the Euphuist is hardly caricatured in Sir 
Walter Scott's delineation of Sir "Piercie Shafton in **The 
Monastery.'* The gallant men of that day affected this form 
of address to fair ladies, and fair ladies liked to be greeted in 

1 The reader's attention is called — or recalled — to the masterly etch- 
ing of Sir Philip Sidney, in Motley's History of the United Netherlands. 
The low chant of the cuisse rojnpue is especially pathetic. 
lo 



no ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

such language. Sidney's works have a relish of this diction, 
and are imbued with the spirit which produced it. 

Defence of Poesie. — The second work to be mentioned 
is his ''Defence of Poesie." Amid the gayety and splendor 
of that reign, there was a sombre element. The Puritans 
took gloomy views of life : they accounted amusements, dress, 
and splendor as things of the world; and would even sweep 
away poetry as idle, and even wicked. Sir Philip came to 
its defence with the spirit of a courtier and a poet, and the 
work in which he upholds it is his best, far better in style and 
sense than his Arcadia. It is one of the curiosities of litera- 
ture, in itself, and in its representation of such a social condi- 
tion as could require a defence of poetry. His Astrophel 
and Stella is a collection of amatory poems, disclosing his 
passion for Lady Rich, the sister of the Earl of Essex. Al- 
though something must be allowed to the license of the age, 
in language at least, yet still the Astrophel aiid Stella cannot 
be commended for its morality. The sentiments are far from 
Platonic, and have been severely censured by the best critics. 
Among the young gallants of Euphuistic habitudes, Sidney 
was known as Astrophel ; and Spenser wrote a poem mourn- 
ing the death of Astrophel : Stella, of course, was the star of 
his worship. 

Gabriel Harvey. — Among the friends of both Sidney 
and Spenser, was one who had the pleasure of making them 
acquainted — Gabriel Harvey. He was born, it is believed, 
in 1545, and lived until 1630. Much may be gathered of 
the literary character and tendencies of the age by a perusal 
of the "three proper and wittie familiar letters" which 
passed between Spenser and himself, and the "four letters 
and certain sonnets," containing valuable notices of contem- 
porary poets. He also prefixed a poem entitled Hobbinol, to 
the Faery Queene. But Harvey most deserves our notice be- 



SPENSER AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. Ill 

cause he was the champion of the hexameter verse in Eng- 
lish, and imbued even Spenser with an enthusiasm for it. 

Each language has its own poetic and rhythmic capacities. 
Actual experiment and public taste have declared their ver- 
dict against hexameter verse in English. The genius of the 
Northern languages refuses this old heroic measure, which 
the Latins borrowed from the Greeks, and all the scholarship 
and finish of Longfellow has not been able to establish it in 
English. Harvey was a pedant so thoroughly tinctured with 
classical learning, that he would trammel his own language 
by ancient rules, instead of letting it grow into the assertion 
of its own rules. 

Edmund Spenser — The Shepherd's Calendar. — Hav- 
ing noticed these lesser lights of the age of Spenser, we return 
to a brief consideration of that poet, who, of all others, is the 
highest exponent and representative of literature in the age 
of Queen Elizabeth, and whose works are full of contem- 
porary history. 

Spenser was born in the year of the accession of Queen 
Mary, 1553, at London, and of what he calls ''a house of 
ancient fame." He was educated at Cambridge, where he 
early displayed poetic taste and power, and he went, after leav- 
ing college, to reside as a tutor in the North of England. A 
love affair with "a. skittish female," who jilted him, was the 
cause of his writing the Shepherd' s Calenda?-, which he soon 
after took with him in manuscript to London, as the first fruits 
of a genius that promised far nobler things. 

Harvey introduced him to Sidney, and a tender friendship 
sprang up between them: he spent much of his time with 
Sidney at Pennshurst, and dedicated to him the Shepherd's 
Calendar. He calls it "an olde name for a newe worke." 
The plan of it is as follows : There are twelve parts, corre- 
sponding to twelve months : these he calls aeglogues^ or goat- 
herde's songs, {xiol eclogues ox ix'Koyai — well-chosen words.) 



112 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

It is a rambling work in varied melody, interspersed and re- 
lieved by songs and lays. 

His Archaisms. — In view of its historical character, there 
are several points to be observed. It is of philological im- 
portance to notice that in the preliminary epistle, he explains 
and defends his use of archaisms — for the language of none 
of his poems is the current English of the day, but always 
that of a former period — saying that he uses old English 
words *' restored as to their rightful heritage; " and it is also 
evident that he makes new ones, in accordance with just 
principles of philology. This fact is pointed out, lest the 
cursory reader should look for the current English of the age 
of Elizabeth in Spenser's poems. 

How much, or rather how little he thought of the poets of 
the day, may be gathered from his saying that he "scorns 
and spews the rakehelly rout of ragged rymers." It further 
displays the boldness of his English, that he is obliged to add 
*' a Glosse or Scholion," for the use of the reader. 

Another historical point worthy of observation is his early 
adulation of Elizabeth, evincing at once his own courtiership 
and her popularity. In "February" (Story of the Oak and 
Briar) he speaks of "colours meete to clothe a mayden 
queene." The whole of "April" is in her honor: 

Of fair Eliza be your silver song, 

That blessed wight. 
The f^oure of virgins, may she flourish long, 

In princely plight. 

In " September " "he discourseth at large upon the loose 
living of Popish prelates," an historical trait of the new but 
cautious reformation of the Marian Church, under Elizabeth. 
Whether a courtier like Spenser could expect the world to 
believe in the motto with which he concludes the epilogue, 
" Merce non mereede," is doubtful, but the words are signifi- 
cant ; and it is not to his discredit that he strove for both. 



SPENSER AND THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. II3 

His Greatest Work. — We now approach The Faerie 
Queene, the greatest of Spenser's works, the most remarkable 
poem of that age, and one of the greatest landmarks in Eng- 
lish literature and English history. It was not published in 
full until nearly all the great events of Elizabeth's reign had 
transpired, and it is replete with the history of nearly half 
a century in the most wonderful period of English history. 
To courtly readers of that day the history was only pleasantly 
illustrative — to the present age it is invaluable for itself: the 
poem illustrates the history. 

He received, through the friendship of Sidney, the patron- 
age of his uncle, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester — a pow- 
erful nobleman, because, besides his family name, and the 
removal of the late attainder, which had been in itself a dis- 
tinction, he was known to be the lover of the queen : for what- 
ever may be thought of her conduct, we know that in recom- 
m.ending him as a husband to the widowed Queen of Scots, 
she said she would have married him herself had she designed 
to marry at all ; or, it may be said, she would have married 
him had she dared, for that act would have ruined her. 

Spenser was a loyal and enthusiastic subject, a poet, and a 
scholar. From these characteristics sprang the Faerie Queene. 
After submitting the first book to the criticism of his friend 
and his patron, he dedicated the work to ''The most high, 
mighty, and magnificent empress, renowned for piety, virtue, 
and all gracious government, Elizabeth, by the grace of God 
Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and of Virginia." * 

^ This last claim of title was based upon the voyages of the Cabots, and 
the unsuccessful colonial efforts of Raleigh and Gilbert. 
10* H 



CHAPTER XII. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE. 



The Faerie Queene. 
The Plan Proposed. 
Illustrations of the His- 
tory. 
The Knight and the Lady. 



The Wood of Error and the 

Hermitage. 
The Crusades. 
Britomartis and Sir Arte- 



Elizabeth. 

Mary Queen of Scots. 
Other Works. 
Spenser's Fate. 



gal. I Other Writers. 

The Faerie Queene. 



THE Faerie Queene is an allegory, in many parts capable 
of more than one interpretation. Some of the charac- 
ters stand for two, and several of them even for three distinct 
historical personages. 

The general plan and scope of the poem may be found in 
the pcet's letter to his friend, Sir Walter Raleigh. It is de- 
signed to enumerate and illustrate the moral virtues which 
should characterize a noble or gentle person — to present 
*Uhe image of a brave knight perfected in the twelve private 
morall vertues> as Aristotle hath devised." It appears that 
the author designed twelve books, but he did not accomplish 
his purpose. The poem, which he left unfinished, contains 
but six books or legends, each of which relates the adven- 
tures of a knight who is the patron and representative of a 
special virtue. 

Book I. gives the adventures of St. George, the Red- Cross 
Knight, by whom is intended the virtue of Holiness. 

Book II., those of Sir Guyon, or Temperance. 

Book III., Britomartis, a lady-knight, or Chastity. 

Book IV., Cambel and Triamond, or Friendship. 

n4 



THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE. II5 

Book v., Sir Artegal, or Justice. 

Book VI., Sir Calydore, or Courtesy. 

The perfect hero of the entire poem is King Arthur, chosen 
**as most fitte, for the excellency of his person, being made 
famous by many men's former workes, and also furthest from 
the daunger of envy and suspition of present time." 

It was manifestly thus, too, that the poet solved a difficult 
and delicate problem : he pleased the queen by adopting this 
mythic hero, for who else was worthy of her august hand ? 

And in the person of the faerie queene herself Spenser 
informs us; "I mean ^/(9;7 in my general intention, but in 
my particular, I conceive the most excellent and glorious per- 
son of our sovereign, the Queene.'^ 

Did we depend upon the poem for an explanation of Spen- 
ser's design, we should be left in the dark, for he intended 
to leave the origin and connection of the adventures for the 
twelfth book, which was never wTitten ; but he has given us 
his plan in the same preliminary letter to Raleigh. 

The Plan Proposed. — ''The beginning of my history," 
he says, ''should be in the twelfth booke, which is the last; 
where I devise that the Faerie Queene kept her Annual Feaste 
XII days ; uppon which XII severall days the occasions of 
the XII severall adventures hapned, which being undertaken 
by XII severall knights, are in these XII books handled and 
discoursed." 

First, a tall, clownish youth falls before the queen and de- 
sires a boon, which she might not refuse, viz. the achieve- 
ment of any adventure which might present itself. Then 
appears a fair lady, habited in mourning, and riding on an 
ass, while behind her conies a dwarf, leading a caparisoned 
war-horse, upon which was the complete armor of a knight. 
The lady falls before the queen and complains that her father 
and mother, an ancient king and queen, had, for many years, 



Il6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

been shut up by a dragon in a brazen castle, and begs that 
one of the knights may be allowed to deliver them. 

The young clown entreats that he may take this adventure, 
and notwithstanding the wonder and misgiving of all, the 
armor is found to fit him well, and when he had put it 
on, "he seemed the goodliest man in all the company, and 
was well liked by the lady, and eftsoones taking on him 
knighthood, and mounting on that strounge courser, he 
went forth with her on that adventure ; where beginneth 
the First Booke." 

In a similar manner, other petitions are urged, and other 
adventures undertaken. 

Illustrations of the History. — The history in this poem 
lies directly upon the surface. Elizabeth was the Faery Queen 
herself — faery in her real person, springing Cinderella-like from 
durance and danger to the most powerful throne in Europe. 
Hers was a reign of faery character, popular and august at 
home, after centuries of misrule and civil war ; abroad Eng- 
lish influence and power were exerted in a magical manner. 
It is she who holds a court such as no Englishman had ever 
seen ; who had the power to transform common men into 
valiant warriors, elegant courtiers, and great statesmen ; to 
send forth her knights upon glorious adventures — Sidney 
to die at Zutphen, Raleigh to North and South America, 
Frobisher — with a wave of her hand as he passes down the 
Thames — to try the northwest passage to India; Effingham, 
Drake, and Hawkins to drive off to the tender mercy of 
northern storms the Invincible Armada, and then to point 
out -to the coming generations the distant fields of English 
enterprise. 

*' Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon 
together to crumble into ruins ; and all the forms, desires, 
beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never 
to return; "^ but this virgin queen was the founder of a new 

^ Froude, i. 65. 



THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE. 11/ 

chivalry, whose deeds were not less valiant, and far more use- 
ful to civilization. 

It is not our purpose, for it would be impossible, to inter- 
pret all the history contained in this wonderful poem : a few 
of the more striking presentations will be indicated, and thus 
suggest to the student how he may continue the investigation 
for himself. 

The Knight and the Lady. — In the First Book we are 
at once struck with the fine portraiture of the Red Crosse 
Knight, the Patron of Holinesse, which we find in the open- 
ing lines : • . 

A gentle knight was pricking on the plain, 
Ycladd in mighty arms and silver shield. 

As we read we discover, without effort, that he is the St. 
George of England, or the impersonation of England herself, 
whose red-cross banner distinguishes her among the nations 
of the earth. It is a description of Christian England with 
which the poet thus opens his work : 

And on his brest a bloodie cross he bore, 
The dear remembrance of his dying Lord, 

For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, 
And dead, as living ever, Him adored. 

Upon his shield the like was also scored. 

For sovereign hope which in his help he had. 

Then follows his adventure — that of St. George and the 
Dragon. By slaying this monster, he will give comfort and 
aid to a peerless lady, the daughter of a glorious king; this 
fair lady, Una, who has come a long distance, and to whom., 
as a champion, the Faery Queene has presented the red-cross 
knight. Thus is presented the historic truth that the reformed 
and suffering Church looked to Queen Elizabeth for succor 
and support, for the Lady Una is one of several portraitures 
of the Church in this poem. 



Il8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

As we proceed in the poem, the history becomes more appa- 
rent. The Lady Una, riding upon a lowly ass, shrouded by a 
veil, covered with a black stole, ''as one that inly mourned," 
and leading "a milk-white lamb," is the Church. The ass 
is the symbol of her Master's lowliness, who made even his 
triumphant entry into Jerusalem upon "a. colt the foal of an 
ass;" the lamb, the emblem of the innocence and of the 
helplessness of the ''little flock;" the black stole is meant 
to represent the Church's trials and sorrows in her former his- 
tory as well as in that naughty age. The dragon is the old 
serpent, her constant and bitter foe, who, often discomfited, 
returns again and again to the attack in hope of her over- 
throw. 

The Wood of Error. — The adventures of the knight 
and the lady take them first into the Wood of Error, a noble 
and alluring grove, within which, however, lurks a. loathsome 
serpent. The knight rushes upon this female monster with 
great boldness, but 

. . . Wrapping up her wreathed body round, 
She leaped upon his shield and her huge train 

All suddenly about his body wound, 

That hand and foot he strove to stir in vain. 

God help the man so wrapt in Error's endless chain. 

The Lady Una cries out : 

. . . Now, now, sir knight, shew what ye bee, 

Add faith unto thy f aire, and be not faint. 
Strangle her, else she sure will strangle thee. 

He follows her advice, makes one desperate effort, Error is 
slain, and the pilgrimage resumed. 

Thus it is taught that the Church has waged successful bat- 
tle with Error in all its forms — paganism, Arianism, Socin- 
ianism, infidelity ; and in all ages of her history, whether 
crouching in the lofty groves of the Druids, or in the more 
insidious forms of later Christian heresy. 



THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE. II9 

The Hermitage. — On leaving the Wood of Error, the 
knight and Lady Una encounter a venerable hermit, and are 
led into his hermitage. This is Archimago, a vile magician 
thus disguised, and in his retreat foul spirits personate both 
knight and lady, and present these false doubles to each. 
Each sees what seems to be the other's fall from virtue, and, 
horrified by the sight, the real persons leave the hermitage by 
separate ways, and wander, in inextricable mazes lost, until for- 
tune and faery bring them together again and disclose the truth. 

Here Spenser, who was a zealous Protestant, designs to 
present the monastic system, the disfavor into which the mon- 
asteries had fallen, and the black arts secretly studied among 
better arts in the cloisters, especially in the period just suc- 
ceeding the Norman conquest. 

The Crusades. — As another specimen of the historic in- 
terpretation, we may trace the adventures of England in the 
Crusades, as presented in the encounter of St. George with 
Sansfoyj (without faith,) or the Infidel. 

From the hermitage of Archimago, 

The true St. George had wandered far away, 
Still flying from his thoughts and jealous fear, 

Will was his guide, and grief led him astray ; 

At last him chanced to meet upon the way 
A faithless Saracen all armed to point, 

In whose great shield was writ with letters gay 
Sansfoy: full large of limb, and every joint 
He was, and cared not for God or man a point. 

Well might the poet speak of Mohammedanism as large of 
limb, for it had stretched itself like a Colossus to India, and 
through Northern Africa into Spain, where it threatened 
Christendom, beyond the Pyrenees. It was then that the unity 
of the Church, the concurrence of Europe in one form of 
Christianity, made available the enthusiasm which succeeded 
in stemming the torrent of Islam, and setting bounds to its 
conquests. 



120 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

It is not our purpose to pursue the adventures of the 
Church, but to indicate the meaning of the allegory and the 
general interpretation ; it will give greater zest to the student 
to make the investigation for himself, with the- all-sufficient 
aids of modern criticism. 

Assailed in turn by error in doctrine, superstition, hypoc- 
risy, enchantments, lawlessness, pride, and despair, the red- 
cross knight overcomes them all, and is led at last by the 
Lady Una into the House of Holiness, a happy and glorious 
house. There, anew equipped with the shield of Faith, the 
helmet of Salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, he goes forth 
to greater conquests ; the dragon is slain, the Lady Una tri- 
umphant, the Church delivered, and Holiness to the Lord 
established as the law of his all-subduing kingdom on earth. 

Britomartis. — In the third book the further adventures of 
the red-cross knight are related, but a heroine divides our atten- 
tion with him. Britomartis, or Chastity, finds him attacked by 
six lawless knights, who try to compel him to give up his lady 
and serve another. Here Britomartis represents Elizabeth, 
and the historic fact is the conflict of English Protestantism 
carried on upon land and sea, in the Netherlands, in France, 
and against the Invincible Armada of Philip. The new mis- 
tress offered him in the place of Una -is the Papal Church, and 
the six knights are the nations fighting for the claims of Rome. 

The valiant deeds of Britomartis represent also the power 
of chastity, to which Scott alludes when he says, 

She charmed at once and tamed the heart, 
Incomparable Britomarte.^ 

And here the poet pays his most acceptable tribute to the 
Virgin Queen. She is in love with Sir Artegal — abstract 
justice. She has encountered him in fierce battle, and he 
has conquered her. It was the fond boast of Elizabeth that 

1 Introduction to fifth canto of Marmion. 



THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE. 121 

she lived for her people, and for their sake refused to marry. 
The following portraiture will be at once recognized : 

And round about her face her yellow hair 

Having, thro' stirring, loosed its wonted band, 
Like to a golden border did appear, 

Framed in goldsmith's forge with cunning hand ; 

Yet goldsmith's cunning could not understand 
To frame such subtle wire, so shiny clear, 

For it did glisten like the glowing sand, 
The which Pactolus with his waters sheer, 
Throws forth upon the rivage, round about him near. 

This encomium upon Elizabeth's hair recalls the description 
of another courtier, that it was like the last rays of the de- 
clining sun. Ill-natured persons called it red. 

Sir Artegal, or Justice. — As has been already said, 
Artegal, or Justice, makes conquest of Britomartis or Eliza- 
beth. It is no earthly love that folio vrs, but the declaration 
of the queen that in her continued maidenhood justice to her 
people shall be her only spouse. Such, whatever the honest 
historian may think, was the poet's conceit of what would best 
please his ro3^al mistress. 

It has been already stated that by Gloriana, the Faerie 
Queene, the poet intended the person of Elizabeth in her 
regnant grandeur : Britomartis represents her chastity. Not 
content with these impersonations, Spenser introduces a third : 
it is Belphoebe, the abstraction of virginity ; a character for 
which, however, he designs a dual interpretation. Belphoebe 
is also another representation of the Church; in describing 
her he rises to great splendor of language : 

. . . her birth was of the morning dew. 
And her conception of the glorious prime. 

We recur, as we read, to the grandeur of the Psalmist's words, 
as he speaks of the coming of her Lord : ''In the day of thy 
II 



122 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

power shall the people offer thee free-will offerings with a 
holy worship ; the dew of thy birth is of the womb of the 
morning." 

Elizabeth. — In the fifth book a great number of the sta- 
tistics of contemporary history are found. A cruel sultan, 
urged on by an abandoned sultana, is Philip with the Spanish 
Church. Mercilla, a queen j)ursued by the sultan and his 
wife, is another name for Elizabeth, for he tells us she was 

... a maiden queen of high renown ; 
For her great bounty knowen over all. 

Artegal, assuming the armor of a pagan knight, represents 
justice in the person of Solyman the Magnificent, making 
war against Philip of Spain. In the ninth canto of the sixth 
book, the court of Elizabeth is portrayed ; in the tenth and 
eleventh, the war in Flanders — so brilliantly described in 
Mr. Motley's history. The Lady Beige is the United Neth- 
erlands ; Gerioneo, the oppressor, is the Duke of Alva ; the 
Inquisition appears as a horrid but nameless monster, and 
minor personages occur to complete the historic pictures. 

The adventure of Sir Artegal in succor of the Lady Irena, 
(Erin,) represents the proceedings of Elizabeth in Ireland, in 
enforcing the Reformation, abrogating the establishments of 
her sister Mary, and thus inducing Tyrone's rebellion, with 
the consequent humiliation of Essex. 

Mary Queen of Scots. — With one more interpretation 
we close. In the fifth book, Spenser is the apologist of Eliz- 
abeth for her conduct to her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, 
and he has been very delicate in his distinctions. It is not 
her high abstraction of justice. Sir Artegal, who does the 
murderous deed, but his man Talus, retributive justice, who, 
like a limehound, finds her hidden under a heap of gold, 
and drags her forth by her fair locks, in such rueful plight 
that even Artegal pities her: 



THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE. 123 

Yet for no pity would he change the course 

Of justice which in Talus hand did lie, 
Who rudely haled her forth without remorse, 

Still holding up her suppliant hands on high, 

And kneeling at his feet submissively ; 
But he her suppliant hands, those hands of gold. 

And eke her feet, those feet of silver try, 
Which sought unrighteousness and justice sold, < 

' Chopped off and nailed on high that all might them behold. 

She was a royal lady, a regnant queen : her hands held a 
golden sceptre, and her feet pressed a silver footstool. She 
was thrown down the castle wall, and drowned " in the dirty 
mud." 

" But the stream washed away her guilty blood." Did it 
wash away Elizabeth's bloody guilt? No. For this act she 
stands in history like Lady Macbeth, ever rubbing her hands, 
but "the damned spot" will not out at her bidding. Granted 
all that is charged against Mary, never was Avoman so meanly, 
basely, cruelly treated as she. 

What has been said is only in partial illustration of the 
plan and manner of Spenser's great poem : the student is in- 
vited and encouraged to make an analysis of the other por- 
tions himself. To the careless reader the poem is harmoni- 
ous, the pictures beautiful, and the imagery gorgeous ; to the 
careful student it is equally charming, and also discloses his- 
toric pictures of great value. 

It is so attractive that the critic lingers unconsciously upon 
it. Spenser's tributes to the character of woman are original, 
beautiful, and just, and the fame of his great work, originally 
popular and designed for a contemporary purpose only, has 
steadily increased. Next to Milton, he is the most learned 
of the British poets. Warton calls him the serious Spenser. 
Thomson says he formed himself upon Spenser. He took 
the ottava rima, or eight-lined stanza of the Italian poets, 
and by adding an Alexandrine line, formed it into what 
has since been called the Spenserian stanza, which has been 



124 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

imitated by many great poets since, and by Byron, the 
greatest of them, in his Childe Harold. Of his language it 
has already been said that he designedly uses the archaic, or 
that of Chaucer ; or, as Pope has said, 

Spenser himself affects the obsolete. 

The plan of the poem, neglecting the unities of an epic, is 
like that of a general history, rambling and desultory, or like 
the transformations of a fairy tale, as it is : his descriptions 
are gorgeous, his verse exceedingly melodious, and his man- 
agement of it very graceful. The Gerusalemme Liberata of 
Tasso appeared while he was writing the Faery Queene, and 
he imitated portions of that great epic in his own, but his 
imitations are finer than the original. 

His OTHER Works. — His other works need not detain us : 
Hymns in honor of Love and Beauty, Prothalamion, and 
Epithalamion, Mother Hubbard's Tale, Amoretti or Sonnets, 
The Tears of the Muses or Brittain's Ida, are little read at the 
present day. His Astrophel is a tender ''pastoral elegie " 
upon the death of the most noble and valorous knight. Sir 
Philip Sidney; and is better known for its subject than for 
itself. This was a favorite theme of the friendly and sensitive 
poet; he has also written several elegies and aeglogues in 
honor of Sidney. 

Spenser's Fate. — The fate of Spenser is a commentary 
upon courtiership, even in the reign of Elizabeth, the Faery 
Queene. Her requital of his adoration was an annual pension 
of fifty pounds, and the ruined castle and unprofitable estate 
of Kilcohnan in Ireland, among a half-savage population, in 
a period of insurrections and massacres, with the requirement 
that he should reside upon his grant. An occasional visit 
from Raleigh, then a captain in the army, a rambler along 
the banks of the picturesque Mulla, and the composition and 



THE HISTORY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE, 12$ 

arrangement of the great poem with the suggestions of his 
friend, were at once his labors and his only recreations. He 
sighed after the court, and considered himself as hardly used 
by the queen. * 

At length an insurrection broke out, and his home was set 
on fire: he fled from his flaming castle, and in the confusion 
his infant child was left behind and burned to death. A few 
months after, he died in London, on January i6, 1598-9, 
broken-hearted and poor, at an humble tavern in King Street. 
Buried at the expense of the Earl of Essex, Ann Countess of 
Dorset bore the expense of his monument in Westminster 
Abbey, in gratitude for his noble championship of woman. 
Upon that are inscribed these words: Anglorum poetarum 
nosiri seculi facile princeps — truer words, great as is the 
praise, than are usually found in monumental inscriptions. 

Whatever our estimate of Spenser, he must be regarded as 
the truest literary exponent and representative of the age of 
Elizabeth, almost as much her biographer as Miss Strickland, 
and her historian as Hume : indeed, neither biographer nor 
historian could venture to draw the lineaments of her charac- 
ter without having recourse to Spenser and his literary con- 
temporaries. 

Other Writers of the Age of Spenser. 

Richard Hooker, 1553-1598 : educated at Oxford, he became Master of the 
Teniple in London, a post which he left with pleasure to take a country 
parish. He wrote a famous work, entitled " A Treatise on the Laws 
of Ecclesiastical Polity," which is remarkable for its profound learning, 
powerful logic, and eloquence of style. In it he defends the position 
of the Church of England, against Popery on the one hand and Calvin- 
ism on the other. 

Robert Burton, 1576-1639: author of "The Anatomy of Melancholic," 
an amusing and instructive medley of quotations and classical anec- 
dotes, showing a profound erudition. In this all the causes and effects 
of melancholy are set forth with varied illustrations. His no77t de phane 
was Democritus, Jr., and he is an advocate of the laughing philosophy. 
Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679: tutor to Charles II., w^hen Prince of Wales, 



126 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and author of the Leviathan. This is a philosophical treatise, in which 
he advocates monarchical government, as based upon the fact that all 
•:r;(n are seli^-h, and lu '. .man nature, being essentially corrupt, re- 
n aires ?in iron control: he alio wrote upon Liberty and Necessity, and 
on Human Nature 

John ?^tow, 1 525-1 'I , and antiquary. Principally valuable for 

v';-;"'' '■'''■ ■ ;v >v f English Chronicles," and '* A Survey of 
London." The latter is the foundation of later topographical descrip- 
tions of the English metropolis. 

Raphael Hollinshed, or Holinshed, died about 1580: his Chronicles of 
Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande, were a treasure-house to Shakspeare, 
from which he drew materials for King Lear, Cymbeline, Macbeth, and 
other plays. 

Richard Hakluyt, died 1616: being greatly interested in voyages and 
travels, he wrote works upon the adventures of others. Among these 
are, "Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America," and 
*' Four Voyages unto Florida," which have been very useful in the 
compilation of early American histoiy. 

Samuel Purchas, 1577-1628: like Hakluyt, he was exceedingly indus- 
trious in collecting material, and wrote " Hakluyt's Posthumus, or 
Purchas, his Pilgrimes," a history of the world "in Sea Voyages and 
Land Travels." 

Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618: a man famous for his personal strength 
and comeliness, vigor of mind, valor, adventures, and sufferings. A 
prominent actor in the stirring scenes of Elizabeth's reign, he was high 
in the favor of the queen. Accused of high treason on the accession of 
James I., and imprisoned under sentence of death, an unsuccessful ex- 
pedition to South Am.erica in search of El Dorado, which caused com- 
plaints from the Spanish king, led to his execution under the pending 
sentence. He wrote, chiefly m prison, a History of the World, in 
which he was aided by his literary friends, and which is highly com- 
mended. It extends to the end of the second Macedonian war. Ra- 
leigh was also a poet, and wrote several special treatises. 

William Camden, 1551-1623: author of Britannia, or a chorographic de- 
scription of the most flourishing kingdoms of England, Scotland, Ire- 
land, and the adjacent islands, from the earliest antiquity. This work, 
M^ritten in Latin, has been translated into English. He also wrote a 
sketch of the reign of Elizabeth. 
George Buchanan, 1 506-1 581 : celebrated as a Latin writer, an historian, 
a poet, and an ecclesiastical polemic. He wrote a History of Scotland, 
a Latin version of the Psalms, and a satire called Cha^nceleon. He was 



WRITERS IN SPENSER S AGE. 12/ 

a man of profound learning and indomitable courage ; and when told, 
just before his death, that the king was incensed at his treatise De Jure 
Regni, he answered that he was not concerned at that, for he was 
"going to a place where there were few kings." 

Thomas Sackville, Earl Dorset,Lord Buckhurst, 1536-1608: author, or 
rather originator of " The Mirror for Magistrates," showing by illus- 
trious, unfortunate examples, the vanity and transitory character of hu- 
man success. Of Sackville and his portion of the Mirror for Magis- 
trates, Craik says they " must be considered as forming the connecting 
link between the Canterbury Tales and the Fairy Queen." 

Saimiel Daniel, 1 562-161 9: an historian and a poet. His chief work is 
" The Historic of the Civile Warres between the Houses of York and 
Lancaster," " a production," says Drake, " which reflects great credit 
on the age in which it was written." Tbis work is in poetical form; 
and, besides it, he wrote many poems and plays, and numerous sonnets. 

Michael Drayton, 1563-1631: a versatile writer, most favorably known 
through his Polyolbion, a poem in thirty books, containing a detailed 
description of the topography of England, in Alexandrine verses. His 
Barons' Wars describe the civil commotions during the reign of Ed- 
ward II, 

Sir John Davies, 1 570-1626: author of A'c'^<r<? Teipsiim and The Orchestra. 
The former is commended by Hallam ; and another critic calls it " the 
best poem, except Spenser's Faery Queen, in Queen Elizabeth's, or even 
in James VI.'s time." 

John Donne, 1573-1631 : a famous preacher. Dean of St. Paul's: consid- 
ered at the head of the metaphysical school of poets : author of Pseudo- 
Martyr, Polydoron, and numerous sermons. He wrote s&wqvl satires, 
which are valuable, but his style is harsh, and his ideas far-fetched. 

Joseph Hall, 1574-1656 : an eminent divine, author of six books of satires, 
of which he called the first three toothless, and the others biting satires. 
These are valuable as presenting truthful pictures of the manners and 
morals of the age and of the defects in contemporary literature. 

Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, 1554-1628: he wrote the Life of Sid- 
ney, and requested to have placed upon his tomb, " The friend of Sir 
Philip Sidney." He was also the author of numerous treatises : " Mon- 
archy," "Humane Learning," "Wars," etc., and of two tragedies. 

George Chapman, 1557-1634: author of a translation of Homer, in verses 
of fourteen syllables. It retains much of the spirit of the original, and 
is still considered one of the best among the numerous versions of the 
ancient poet. He also wrote Ccesar and Pompcy ; Byron's Tragedy, 
and other plays. 



Origin of the Drama, 
Miracle Plays. 
Moralities. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 



First Comedy. [ Christopher Marlowe. 

Early Tragedies. Other Dramatists. 



I Playwrights and Morals. 

Origin of the English Drama. 

TO the Elizabethan period also belongs the glory of 
having produced and fostered the English drama, it- 
self so marked a teacher of history, not only in plays pro- 
fessedly historical, but also in the delineations of national 
character, the indications of national taste, and the satirical 
scourgings of the follies of the day. A few observations are 
necessary as to its feeble beginnings. The old Greek drama 
indeed existed as a model, especially in the tragedies of Euri- 
pides and the comedies of Aristophanes ; but until the fall 
of Constantinople, these were a dead letter to Western Europe, 
and when the study of Greek was begun in England, they 
were only open to men of the highest education and culture; 
whereas the drama designed for the people was to cater in its 
earlier forms to the rude tastes and love of the marvellous 
which are characteristic of an unlettered people. And, be- 
sides, the Roman drama of Plautus and of Terence was not 
suited to the comprehension of the multitude, in its form and 
its preservation of the unities. To gratify the taste for shows 
and excitement, the people already had the high ritual of the 
Church, but they demanded something more : the Church 
itself acceded to this demand, and dramatized Scripture at 
once for their amusement and instruction. Thus the mys- 

128 



THE DRAMA. I29 

ie7'ia or miracle play originated, and served a double pur- 
pose. 

''As in ancient Greece, generations before the rise of the 
great dramas of Athens, itinerant companies wandered from 
village to village, carrying their stage furniture in their little 
carts, and acted in. their booths and tents the grand stories of 
the mythology — so in England the mystery players haunted 
the wakes and fairs, and in barns or taverns, taprooms, or in 
the farm-house kitchen, played at saints and angels, and trans- 
acted on their petty stage the drama of the Christian faith." ^ 

The Mystery, or Miracle Play. — The subjects of these 
dramas were taken from such Old Testament narratives as the 
creation, the lives of the patriarchs, the deluge • or from the 
crucifixion, and from legends of the saints : the plays were 
long, sometimes occupying portions of several days consecu- 
tively, during seasons of religious festival. They were enacted 
in monasteries, cathedrals, churches, and church-yards. The 
mise en serene was on two stages or platforms, on the upper of 
which were represented the Persons of the Trinity, and on 
the lower the personages of earth ; while a yawning cellar, 
with smoke arising from an unseen fire, represented the infer- 
nal regions. This device is similar in character to the plan 
of Dante's poem — Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. 

The earliest of these mysteries was performed somewhere 
about the year 1300, and they held sway until. 1600, being, 
however, slowly supplanted by the moralities, which we shall 
presently consider. Many of these mysteries still remain in 
English, and notices of them may be found in Collier's His- 
tory of Dramatic Poetry. 

A miracle play was performed to celebrate the birth of 
Philip 11. of Spain. They are still performed in Andalusia, 
and one written within a few years for such representation, 
was enacted at Seville, with great pomp of scenic effect, 

1 Froude, i, 73. 
I 



130 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

in the Holy Week of 1870. Similar scenes are also wit- 
nessed by curious foreigners at the present day in the Ober- 
Ammergau of Bavaria. These enable the traveller of to-day 
to realize the former history. 

To introduce a comic element, the devil v/as made to ap- 
pear with horns, hoof, and tail, to figure with grotesque ma- 
lignity throughout the play, and to be reconsigned at the close 
to his dark abode by the divine power. 

Moralities. — As the people became enlightened, and 
especially as religious knowledge made progress, such childish 
shows were no longer able to satisfy them. The drama un- 
dertook a higher task of instruction in the form of what was 
called a morality, or moral play. Instead of old stories re- 
produced to please the childish fancy of the ignorant, genius 
invented scenes and incidents taken indeed from common 
life, but the characters were impersonal ; they were the ideal 
virtues, morality, hope, mercy, frugality, and their correlative 
vices. l^\iQ mystery had endeavored to present similitudes; 
the moralities were of the nature of allegory, and evinced a 
decided progress in popular intelligence. 

These for a time divided the interest with the mysteries, 
but eventually superseded them. The impersonality of the 
characters enabled the author to make hits at political circum- 
stances and existent follies with impunity, as the multitude 
received advice and reproof addressed to them abstractly, 
without feeling a personal sting, and the government would 
not condescend to notice such abstractions. The moralities 
were enacted in court-yards or palaces, the characters gen- 
erally being personated by students, or merchants from the 
guilds. A great improvement was also made in the length 
of the play, which was usually only an hour in perform- 
ance. The public taste was so wedded to the devil of the 
mysteries, that he could not be given up in the moral plays : 
he kept his place; but a rival buffoon appeared in the person 



THE DRAMA. I3I 

of the vice, who tried conclusions with the archfiend in serio- 
comic style until the close of the performance, when Satan 
always carried the vice away in triumph, as he should do. 

The moralities retained their place as legitimate drama 
throughout the sixteenth century, and indeed after the modern 
drama appeared. It is recorded that Queen Elizabeth, in 
1601, then an old woman, witnessed one of these plays, en- 
titled ''The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality." 
This was written by Lodge and Greene, two of the regular 
dramatists, after Ben Jonson had written " Every Man in his 
Humour," and while Shakspeare was writing Hamlet. Thus 
the various progressive forms of the drama overlapped each 
other, the older retaining its place until the younger gained 
strength to assert its rights and supersede its rival. 

The Interlude. — While the moralities were slowly dying 
out, another form of the drama had appeared as a connecting 
link between them and the legitimate drama of Shakspeare. 
This was the interlude, a short play, in which the dramatis 
personce were no longer allegorical characters^ but persons 
in real life, usually, however, not all bearing names even as- 
sumed, but presented as a friar, a curate, a tapster, etc. 
The chief characteristic of the interlude was, however, its 
satire ; it was a more outspoken reformer than the morality, 
scourged the evils of the age with greater boldness, and 
plunged into religious controversy with the zeal of opposing 
ecclesiastics. The first and principal writer of these inter- 
ludes was John Hey wood, a Roman Catholic, who wrote 
during the reign of Henry VIII. , and, while a professed jester, 
was a great champion of his Church. 

As in all cases of progress, literary and scientific, the lines 
of demarcation cannot be very distinctly drawn, but as the 
morality had superseded the mystery, and the interlude the 
morality, so now they were all to give way before the regular 
drama. The people were becoming more educated ; the 



132 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

greater spread of classical knowledge had caused the drama- 
tists to study and assimilate the excellences of Latin and Greek 
models ; the power of the drama to instruct and refine, as well 
as to amuse, was acknowledged, and thus its capability of 
improvement became manifest. The forms it then assumed 
were more permanent, and indeed have remained almost un- 
changed down to our own day. 

What is called the first com.edy in the language cannot be 
expected to show a very decided improvement over the last 
interludes or moralities, but it bears those distinctive marks 
which establish its right to the title. 

The First Comedy. — This was Ralph Roister Bolster^ 
which appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century : (a 
printed copy of 155 1 was discovered in 181 8.) Its author 
was Nicholas Udall, the master of Eton, a clergyman, but 
very severe as a pedagogue ; an ultra Protestant, who is also 
accused of having stolen church plate, which may perhaps 
mean that he took away from the altar what he regarded as 
popish vessels and ornaments. He calls the play ^' a comedy 
and interlude," but claims that it is imitated from the Roman 
drama. It is regularly divided into acts and scenes, in the 
form of our modern plays. The plot is simple : Ralph, a 
gay Lothario, courts as gay a widow, and the by-play includes 
a designing servant and an intriguing lady's-maid : these are 
the stock elements of a hundred comedies since. 

Contemporary with this was Gammer Gurton' s Needle^ 
supposed to be written, but not conclusively, by John Still, 
Bishop of Bath and Wells, about 1560. The story turns upon 
the loss of a steel needle — a rare instrument in that day, 
- as it was only introduced into England from Spain during the 
age of Elizabeth. This play is a coarser piece than Ralph 
Roister Bolster; the buffoon raises the devil to aid him in 
finding the lost needle, which is at length found, by very pal- 



THE DRAMA. 133 

pable proof, to be sticking in the seat of Goodman Hodge's 
breeches. 

The First Tragedy. — Hand in hand with these first 
comedies came the earliest tragedy, Gorboduc, by Sackville 
and Norton, known under another name as Fe?'rex and Por- 
rex; and it is curious to observe that this came in while the 
moralities still occupied the stage, and before the interludes 
had disappeared, as it was played before the queen at White 
Hall, in 1562. It is also to be noted that it introduced a 
chorus like that of the old Greek drama. Ferrex and Porrex 
are the sons of King Gorboduc: the former is killed by. the 
latter, who in turn is slain by his own mother. Of Gorboduc, 
Lamb says, "The style of this old play is stiff and cumber- 
some, like the dresses of the times. There may be flesh and 
blood underneath, but we cannot get at it." 

With the awakened interest of the people, the drama now 
made steady progress. In 1568 the tragedy of Tancred and 
Gismunda, based upon one of the stories of Boccaccio, was 
enacted before Elizabeth. 

A license for establishing a regular theatre was got out by 
Burbage in 1574. Peele and Greene wrote plays in the new 
manner: Marlowe, the greatest name in the English drama, 
except those of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, gave to the 
world his Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor 
Faustiis, which many do not hesitate to compare favorably 
with Goethe's great drama, and his Rich Jew of Malta, which 
contains the portraiture of Barabas, second only to the Shy- 
lock of Shakspeare. Of Marlowe a more special mention 
will be made. 

Playwrights and Morals. — It was to the great advan- 
tage of the English regular drama, that the men who wrote 
were almost in every case highly educated in the classics, and 
thus able to avail themselves of the best models. It is equally 



134 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

true that, owing to the religious condition of the times, when 
Puritanism launched forth its diatribes against all amusements, 
they were men in the opposition, and in most cases of irregu- 
lar lives. Men of the world, they took their characters from 
among the persons with whom they associated ; and so we 
find in their plays traces of the history of the age, in the ap- 
propriation of classical forms, in the references to religious 
and political parties, and in their delineation of the morals, 
manners, and follies of the period : if the drama of the pres- 
ent day owes to them its origin and nurture, it also retains as 
an inheritance many of the faults and deformities from which 
in a more refined period it is seeking to purge itself. It is 
worthy of notice, that as the drama owes everything to popu- 
lar patronage, its moral tone reflects of necessity the moral 
character of the people who frequent it, and of the age which 
sustains it. 

Christopher Marlowe. — Among those who may be re- 
garded as the immediate forerunners and ushers of Shakspeare, 
and who, although they prepared the way for his advent, have 
been obscured by his greater brilliance, the one most de- 
serving of special mention is Marlowe. 

Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury, about the 
year 1564. He was a wild, irregular genius, of bad morals 
and loose life, but of fine imagination and excellent powers of 
expression. He wrote only tragedies. 

His Tainbiirlaine the Great is based upon the history of 
that Timour Leuk, or Timour the Lame, the great Oriental 
conqueror of the fourteenth century : 

So large of limb, his joints so strongly knit, 
Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear 
Old Atlas' burthen. 

The descriptions are overdrawn, and the style inflated, but 
the subject partakes of the heroic, and was j^pulr-r ctiU, 



THE DRAMA. 135 

though nearly bvo centuries had passed since the exploits of 
the historic hero. 

The Rich Jew of Malta is of value, as presenting to us Bar- 
abas the Jew as he appeared to Christian suspicion and hatred 
in the fifteenth century. As he sits in his country-house with 
heaps of gold before him, and receives the visits of merchants 
who inform him of the safe arrival of his ships, it is manifest 
that he gave Shakspeare the first ideal of his Shylock, upon 
which the greater dramatist greatly improved. 

The Tragicall Life and Death of Doctor John Faiistus 
certainly helped Goethe in the conception and preparation 
of his modern drama, and contains many passages of rare 
power. Charles Lamb says : " The growing horrors of Faus- 
tus are awfully marked by the hours and half-hours which ex- 
pire and bring him nearer and nearer to the enactment of his 
dire compact. It is indeed an agony and bloody sweat." 

Edwaj'd II. presents in the assassination scene wonderful 
power and pathos, and is regarded by Hazlitt as his best play. 

Marlowe is the author of the pleasant madrigal, called by 
Izaak Walton ' ' that smooth song ' ' : 

Come live with me and be my love. 

The playwright, who had led a wild life, came to his end in 
a tavern brawl : he had endeavored to use his dagger upon 
one of the waiters, who turned it upon him, and gave him a 
wound in the head of which he died, in 1593. 

His talents were of a higher order than those of his con- 
temporaries ; he was next to Shakspeare in power, and was 
called by Phillips ''a second Shakspeare." 

Other Dramatic Writers before Shakspeare. 

Thomas Lodge, 1556-1625: educated at Oxford. Wrote The Wounds of 
Civil War, and other tragedies. Rosalynd, a novel, from which Shak- 
speare drew in his As You Like It. He translated Josephus and 
Seneca. 



136 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Thomas Kyd, died about 1600: The Spanish Tragedy, or, Hieronymo is 
Mad Again. This contains a few highly wrought scenes, which have 
been variously attributed to Ben Jonson and to Webster. 
Robert Tailor: w^rote The Hog hath Lost his Pearl, a comedy, published 

in 1614. This partakes of the character of the morality. 
John Marston: v^^rote Antonio and Mellida, 1602; Antonio's Revenge, 
1602; Sophonisba, a Wonder of Women, 1606; The Insatiate Countess, 
1603, and many other plays. Marston ranks high among the imme- 
diate predecessors of Shakspeare, for the number, variety, and vigorous 
handling of his plays. 
George Peele, born about 1553: educated at Oxford. Many ofliis pieces 
are broadly comic. The principal plays are : The Arraignment of 
Paris, Edward I., and David and Bethsabe. The latter is overwrought 
and full of sickish sentiment. 
Thomas Nash, 1 558-1 601 : a satirist and polemic, v^ho is best known for 
his controversy with Gabriel Harvey. Most of his plays were written 
in conjunction v/ith others. He was imprisoned for writing The Isle of 
Dogs, which was played, but not published. He is very licentious in 
his language. 
John Lyly, born about 1553: wrote numerous smaller plays, but is chiefly 
known as the author of Euphues, Anatomy of Wit, and Euphues and his 
England. 
Robert Greene, died 1592: educated at Cambridge. Wvoie Alphonsiis, 
King of Arragon, James IV., George-a- Gree7ie , Friar Bacon and Friar 
Bungay, and other plays. After leading a profligate life, he left behind 
him a pamphlet entitled, "A Groat's-worth of Wit, bought with a Mil- 
lion of Repentance : " this is full of contrition, and of advice to his fel- 
low-actors and fellow-sinners. It is mainly remarkable for its abuse of 
Shakspeaie, " an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers ; " " Tygre's 
heart wrapt in a player's hide; " "an absolute Johannes factotum, in 
his own conceyt the onely shakescene in the country." 
Most of these dramatists wrote in copartnership with others, and many 
of the plays which bear their names singly, have parts composed by col- 
leagues. Such was the custom of the age, and it is now very difficult to 
declare the distinct authorship of many of the plays. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 



The Power of Shakspeare. 
Meagre Early Histor3^ 
Doubts of his Identity. 



What is known. 
Marries, and goes to London. 
"Venus "and " Lucrece." 
Retirement and Death. 



Literary Habitudes. 
Variety of the Plays. 
Table of Dates and Sources. 



The Power of Shakspeare. 

WE have now reached, in our search for the historic 
teachings in English literature, and in our considera- 
tion of the English drama, the greatest name of all, the writer 
whose works illustrate our position most strongly, and yet 
who, eminent type as he is of British culture in the age of 
Elizabeth, was truly and pithily declared by his friend and 
contemporary, Ben Jonson, to be "not for an age, but for all 
time." It is also singularly true that, even in such a work as 
this, Shakspeare really requires only brief notice at our hands, 
because he is so universally known and read : his characters 
are among our familiar acquaintance; his simple but thought- 
ful words are incorporated in our common conversation ; he 
is our every-day companion. To eulogize him to the read- 
ing public is 

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 

To lend a perfume to the violet . . . 

The Bible and Shakspeare have been long conjoined as the 
two most necessary books in a family library ; and Mrs. Cow- 
den Clarke, the author of the Concordance to Shakspeare, 
has pointedly and truthfully said: ''A poor lad, possessing 
no other book, might on this single one make himself a gen- 

12* 137 



138 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

tleraan and a scholar: a poor girl, studying no other volume, 
might become a lady in heart and soul." 

• 

Meagre Early History. — It is passing strange, consid- 
ering the great value of his writings, and his present fame, 
that of his personal history so little is known. In the words 
of Steevens, one of his most successful commentators: ''All 
that is known, with any degree of certainty, concerning Shak- 
speare, is — that he was born at Stratford upon Avon — mar- 
ried and had children there — went to London, where he 
commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays — returned to 
Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." 

This want of knowledge is in part due to his obscure youth, 
during which no one could predict what he would afterward 
achieve, and therefore no one took notes of his life : to his 
own apparent ignorance and carelessness of his own merits, 
and to the low repute in which plays, and especially play- 
wrights, were then held ; although they were in reality m.aking 
their age illustrious in history. The pilgrim to Stratford sees 
the little low house in which he is said to have been born, 
purchased by the nation, and now restored into a smart cot- 
tage: within are a fevv^ meagre relics of the poet's time; not 
far distant is the foundation — recently uncovered — of his 
more ambitious residence in New Place, and a mulberry-tree, 
which probably grew from a slip of that which he had planted 
with his own hand. Opposite is the old Falcon Inn, where 
he made his daily potations. Very near rises, above elms and 
lime-trees, the spire of the beautiful church on the bank of 
the Avon, beneath the chancel of wdiich his remains repose, 
with those of his wife and daughter, overlooked by his bust, 
of which no one knows the maker or the history, except that 
it dates from his own timie. His bust is of life-size, and was 
originally painted to imitate nature — eyes of hazel, hair and 
beard auburn, doublet scarlet, and sleeveless gown of black. 
Covered by a false taste with white paint to imitate marble, 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. I39 

m 

wiiilc it def.troyed identity and age : it has since been recolored 
from trad?donal knowledge, but it is too rude to give us the 
expression of his face. 

The only other probable likeness is that from an old pic- 
ture, an engraving of which, by Droeshout, is found in the 
first folio edition of his plays, published in 1623, seven years 
after his death : it was said by Ben Jonson to be a good like- 
ness. We are very fortunate in having these, unsatisfactory 
as they are, for it is simple truth that beyond these places and 
things, there is little, if anything,, to illustrate the personal his- 
tory of Shakspeare. All that we can know of the man is 
found in his works. 

Doubts of his Identity. — This ignorance concerning 
him has given rise to numerous doubts as to his literary iden- 
tity, and many efforts have been made to find other authors 
for his dramas. Among the most industrious in this de- 
posing scheme, have been Miss Delia Bacon and Mr. Na- 
thr.niel Holmes, who concur in attributing his best plays to 
Frmcis Bacon. That Bacon did not acknowledge his own 
wnrk, they say, is because he rated the dramatic art too far 
beneath his dignity to confess any complicity with it. In 
short, he and other great men of that day wrote immortal 
works which they were ashamed of, and were willing to father 
upon the common actor and stage - manager, one William 
Shakspeare ! 

While it is not within the scope of this volume to enter into 
the controversy, it is a duty to state its existence, and to ex- 
press the judgment that these efforts have been entirely un- 
successful, but have not been without value in that they have 
added a little to the meagre history by their researches, and 
have established the claims of Shakspeare on a firmer found- 
ation than before. 

What is known. — William Shakspeare (spelt ^/z«r^^jr/^^;r 
in the body of his will, but signed Shakspeare) was the third 



140 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

of eight children, and the eldest son of John Shakspeare and 
Mary Arden : he was born at the beautiful rural town of 
Stratford, on the little river Avon, on the 23d of April, 
1564. His father, who was of yeoman rank, was probably a 
dealer in wool and leather. Aubrey, a gossiping chronicler 
of the next generation, says he was a butcher, and some biog- 
raphers assert that he was a glover. He may have exercised 
all these crafts together, but it is more to our purpose to know 
that in his best estate he was a property holder and chief 
burgess of the town. Shakspeare's mother seems to have been 
of an older family. Neither of them could write. Shak- 
speare received his education at the free grammar-school, 
still a well-endowed institution in the town, where he learned 
the "small Latin and less Greek" accorded to him by Ben 
Jonson at a later day. 

There are guesses, rather than traditions, that he was, after 
the age of fifteen, a student in a law-oftice, that he was for a 
time at one of the universities, and also that he was a teacher 
in the grammar-school. These are weak inventions to ac- 
count for the varied learning displayed in his dramas. His 
love of Nature and his power to delineate her charms were 
certainly fostered by the beautiful rural surroundings of Strat- 
ford ; beyond this it is idle to seek to penetrate the obscure 
processes of his youth. 

Marries, and goes to London. — Finding himself one 
of a numerous and poor family, to the support of which his 
father's business was inadequate, he determined to shift for 
himself, and to push his fortunes in the best way he could. 

Whether he regarded matrimony as one element of success 
we do not know, but the preliminary bond of marriage be- 
tween himself and Anne Hathaway, was signed on the 28th 
of November, 1582, when he was eighteen years old. The 
woman was seven years older than himself; and it is a sad 
commentary on the morality of both, that his first child, Su- 
sanna, was baptized on the 25th of May, 1583. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. I4I 

Strolling bands of players, in passing through England, were 
in the habit of stopping at Stratford, and setting upon wheels 
their rude, stage with weather-stained curtains ; and these, it 
should be observed, were the best dramatic companies of the 
time, such as the queen's company, and those in the service 
of noblemen like Leicester, Warwick, and others. If he did 
not see he must have heard of the great pageant in 1575, when 
Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, which 
is so charmingly described by Sir Walter Scott. Young Shak- 
speare became stage-struck, and probably joined one of these 
companies, with other idle young men of the neighborhood. 
Various legends, without sufficient foundation of truth, are 
related of him at this time, which indicate that he was of a 
frolicsome and mischievous turn : among these is a statement 
that he was arraigned for deer-poaching in the park of Sir 
Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote. A satirical reference to Sir 
Thomas in one of his plays,* leads us to think that there is 
some truth in the 'Story, although certain of his biographers 
have denied it. 

In February, 1584-5, he became the father of twins. Ham- 
net and Judith, and in 1586, leaving his wife and children at 
Stratford, he went up with a theatrical company to London, 
where for three years he led a hard and obscure life. He 
was at first a menial at the theatre ; some say he held gen- 
tlemen's horses at the door, others that he was call-boy, 
prompter, scene-shifter, minor actor. At length he began to 
find his true vocation in altering and adapting plays for the 
stage. This earlier practice, in every capacity, was of great 
value to him when he began to write plays of his own.' As an 
actor he never rose above mediocrity. It is said that he 
played such parts as the Ghost in Hamlet, and Adam in As 
You Like It ; but off the stage he became known for a ready 
wit and convivial humor. 

His ready hand for any work caused him to prosper steadily, 
* Opening scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor. 



142 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and so in 1589 we find his name the twelfdi on the list of 
sixteen shareholders in the Blackfriars Theatre, one of the 
first play-houses built in London. That he was steadily grow- 
ing in public favor, as well as in private fortune, might be in- 
ferred from Spenser's mention of him in the ''Tears of the 
Muses," published in 1591, if we were sure he was the person 
referred to. If he was, this is the first great commendation 
he had received : 

The man whom nature's self had made, 
To mock herself and truth to imitate, 

With kindly counter under mimic shade, 
Our pleasant Willie. 

There is, however, a doubt whether the reference is to him, 
as he had written very little as early as 1591. 

Venus and Adonis. — In 1593 appeared his Ve7tus and 
Adonis, which he now had the social position and interest to 
dedicate to the Earl of Southampton. . It is a harmonious and 
beautiful poem, but the display of libidinous passion in the 
goddess, however in keeping with her character and with 
the broad taste of the age, is disgusting to the refined reader, 
even while he acknowledges the great power of the poet. 
In the same year was built the Globe Theatre, a hexagonal 
wooden structure, unroofed over the pit, but thatclied over the 
stage and the galleries. In this, too, Shakspeare was a share- 
holder. 

The Rape of Lucrece. — The Rape of Liicrece was pub- 
lished in 1594, and was dedicated to the same nobleman, who, 
after the custom of the period, became Shakspeare 's patron, 
and showed the value of his patronage by the gift to the poet 
of a thousand pounds. 

Thus in making poetical versions of classical stories, which 
formed the imaginative pabulum of the age, and in readapt- 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 143 

ing older plays, the poet was gaining that skill and power 
which were to produce his later immortal dramas. 

These, as we shall see, he began to write as early as 1589, 
and continued to produce until 161 2. 

Retirement and Death. — A few words will complete 
his personal history: His fortune steadily increased; in 1602 
he was the principal owner of the Globe ; then, actuated by 
his home feeling, which had been kept alive by annual visits 
to Stratford, he determined, as soon as he could, to give up 
the stage, and to take up his residence there. He had pur- 
chased, in 1597, the New Place at Stratford, but he did not 
fully carry out his plan until 161 2, when he finally re-tired 
with ample means and in the enjoyment of an honorable 
reputation. There he exercised a generous hospitality, and 
led a quiet rural life. He planted a mulberry-tree, which 
became a pilgrim's shrine to numerous travellers; but a ruth- 
less successor in the ownership of New Place, the Reverend 
Francis Gastrell, annoyed by the concourse of visitors, was 
Vandal enough to cut it down. Such was the anger of the 
people that he was obliged to leave the place, which he did 
after razing the mansion to the ground. His name is held in 
great detestation at Stratford now, as every traveller is told 
his story. . 

Shakspeare's death occurred on his fifty-second birthday, 
April 23d, 1616. He had been ill of a fever, from which he 
was slowly recovering, and his end is said to have been the 
result of an over-conviviality in entertaining Drayton and Ben 
Jonson, who had paid him a visit at Stratford. 

His son Hamnet had died in 1596, at the age of twelve. 
In 1607, his daughter Susannah had married Dr. Hall ; and in 
161 4 died Judith, who had married Thomas Quiney. Shak- 
speare's wife survived him, and died in 1623. 

Literary Habitudes. — Such, in brief, is the personal 



144 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

history of bliakspeare : of his literary habitudes we know no- 
thing. The exact dates of the appearance of his plays are, in 
most cases, doubtful. Many of these had been printed singly 
during his life, but the first complete edition was published in 
folio, in 1623. It contains tluTfy-six plays, and is the basis 
of the later editions, which contain \}v^x\.y- seven. ^ Many ques- 
tions arise which cannot be fully answered: Did he write all 
the plays contained in the volume ? Are the First Part of 
Henry VI., Titus Andronicus,^ and Pericles his work? Did 
he not write others not found among these? Had he, as was 
not uncommon then and later, collaboration in those which 
bear his name? Was he a Beaumont to some Fletcher, or a 
Saclcville to some Norton ? Upon these questions generations 
of Shakspearean scholars have expended a great amount of 
learned inquiry ever since his da,y, and not without results: 
it is known that many of his dramas are founded upon old 
pla)^s, as to plots ; and that he availed himself of the labor 
of others in casting his plays. 

But the real value of his plays, the insight into human nature, 
the profound philosophy, " the myriad-soul " which they dis- 
play, are Shakspeare's only. By applying just rules of evi- 
dence, we conclude that he did write thirty-five of the pla3^s at- 
tributed to him, and that he did not write, or was not the chief 
writer of others. It is certainly very strong testimony on 
these points, that seven years after his death, and three years 
before that of Bacon, a large folio should have been published 
by his professional friends Heminge and Condell, prefaced with 
ardent eulogies, claiming thirty-six plays as his, and that it 
did not meet with the instant and indignant cry that his claims 
svere false. The players of that day were an envious and 
carping set, and the controversy v/ould have been fierce from 
the very first, had there been just grounds for it. 

Variety of Plays. — No attempt will be made to analyze 
1 Rev. A. Dyce attributes this play to Marlowe or Kyd. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 145 

any of the plays of Shakspeare : that is left for the private 
study and enjoyment of the student, by the use of the very 
numerous aids furnished by commentators and critics. It 
will be found often that in their great ardor, the dramatist has 
been treated like the Grecian poet : 

[Shakspeare's] critics bring to view 
Things which [Shakspeare] never knew. 

Many of the plays are based upon well-known legends and 
fictional tales, some of them already adopted in old plays : 
thus the story of King Lear and his daughters is found in 
Holinshed's Chronicle, and had been for years represented ; 
from this Shakspeare has borrowed the story, but has used 
only a single passage. The play is intended to represent the 
ancient Celtic times in Britain, eight hundred years before 
Christ ; and such is its power and pathos, that we care little 
for its glaring anachronisms and curious errors. In Hol- 
inshed are also found the stories of Cymbeline and Macbeth, 
the former supposed to have occurred during the Roman oc- 
cupancy of Britain, and the latter during the Saxon period. 

With these before us, let us observe that names, chronology, 
geography, costumes, and customs are as nothing in his eyes. 
His aim is human philosophy : he places his living creations 
before us, dressing them, as it were, in any garments most 
conveniently at hand. These lose their grotesqueness as his 
characters speak and act. Paternal love and weakness, met by 
filial ingratitude; these are the lessons and the fearful pictures 
of Lear : sad as they are, the world needed them, and they 
have saved many a later Lear from expulsion and storm and 
death, and shamed many a Goneril and Regan, while they 
have strengthened the hearts of many a Cordelia since. 
Chastity and constancy shine like twin stars from the forest 
of Cymbeline. And what have we in Macbeth? Mad ambi- 
tion parleying with the devil, in the guise of a woman lost to 
all virtue save a desire to aggrandize her husband and her- 
, 13 K 



146 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

self. These have a pretence of history; but Hamlet, with 
hardly that pretence, stands alone supreme in varied excel- 
lence. Ambition, murder, resistless fate, filial love, the love 
of woman, revenge, the power of conscience, paternal solici- 
tude, infinite jest : what a volume is this ! 

Table of Dates and Sources. — The following table, 
which presents the plays in chronological order, ^ the times 
w^ien they were written, as nearly as can be known, and the 
sources whence they were derived, will be of more service 
to the student than any discursive remarks upon the several 
plays. 

Plays. Dates. Sources. 

1. Henry VI., first part . . . 1589 Denied to Shakspeare; attributed 

to Marlowe or Kyd. 

2. Pericles 1590 From the " Gesta Romanorum." 

3. Henry VI., second part . 159I " an older play. 

4. Henry VI., third part . . 1591 " " " " 

5. Two Gentlemen of Verona 1591 " an old tale. 

6. Comedy of Errors . . . 1592 " a comedy of Plautus. 

7. Love's Labor Lost . . . 1592 " an Italian play. 

8. Richard II 1593 " Holinshed and other chron- 

icles. 

9. Richard III 1593 From an old play and Sir Thomas 

More's History. 

10. Midsummer Night's Dream 1594 Suggested by Palamon and Arcite, 

The Knight's Tale, of Chaucer. 

11. Taming of the Shrew . . 1596 From an older play. 

12. Romeo and Juliet .... 1596 " " old tale. Boccaccio. 

13. Merchant of Venice . . . 1597 ** Gesta Romanorum, with sug- 

gestions from Marlowe's Jew of 
Malta. 

14. Henry IV,, part I ... 1597 From an old play. 

15. Henry IV., part 2 . . . 1598 " " " 

16. King John 1598 « " " 

17. All 's Well that Ends Well . 1598 « Boccaccio. 

1 The dates as determined by Malone are given : many of them differ 
from those of Drake and Chalmers. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 14/ 

Plays. Dates. Sources. 

1 8. Henry V ^599 From an older play. 

19. As You Like It ... . 1600 Suggested in part by Lodge's 

novel, Rosalynd. 

20. Much Ado About Nothing 1600 Source unknown. 

21. Hamlet 1601 From the Latin History of Scan- 

dinavia, by Saxo, called Gram- 
maticus. 

22. Merry Wives of Windsor . 1601 Said to have been suggested by 

Elizabeth. 

23. Twelfth Night .... 1601 From an old tale. 

24. Troilus and Cressida . . 1 602 Of classical origin, through Chaucer. 

25. Henry VIII 1603 From the chronicles of the day. 

26. Measure for Measure . . 1603 " an old tale. 

27. Othello 1604 " « " " 

28. King Lear 1605 <* Holinshed. 

29. Macbeth 1606 " " 

30. Julius Caesar 1607 " Plutarch's Parallel Lives. 

31. Antony and Cleopatra . . 1608 " " " " 

32. Cymbeline 1609 " Holinshed. 

33. Coriolanus 1 6 10 " Plutarch. 

34. Timon of Athens . . . . 1610 " " and other sources. 

35. Winter's Tale 161 1 " a novel by Greene. 

36. Tempest 161 2 " Italian Tale. 

37. Titus Andronicus . . . . 1593 Denied to Shakspeare ; probably 

by Marlowe or Kyd. 



CHAPTER XV. 

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, (CONTINUED.) 



The Grounds of his Fame. 
Creation of Character. 
Imagination and Fancy. 



Power of Expression. I Ireland and Collier. 
His Faults. Concordance. 

Influence of Elizabeth. Other Writers. 

Sonnets. I 



The Grounds of his Fame. 

FROM what has been said, it is manifest that as to his 
plots and historical reproductions, Shakspeare has little 
merit biijt taste in selection ; and indeed in most cases, had he 
invented the stories, his merit would not have been great : 
what then is the true secret of his power and of his fame? 
This question is not difficult to answer. 

First, these are due to his wonderful insight into human 
nature, and the philosophy of human life : he dissects the 
human mind in all its conditions, and by this vivisection he 
displays its workings as it lives and throbs ; he divines the 
secret impulses of all ages and characters — childhood, boy- 
hood, manhood, girlhood, and womanhood ; men of peace, 
and men of war ; clowns, nobles, and kings. His large heart 
was sympathetic with all, and even most so with the lowly 
and suffering ; he shows us to ourselves, and enables us to use 
that knowledge for our profit. All the virtues are held up to 
our imitation and praise, and all the vices are scourged and 
rendered odious in our sight. To read Shakspeare aright is 
of the nature of honest self-examination, that most difficult 
and most necessary of duties. 

Creation of Character. — Second : He stands supreme 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. I49 

in the creation of character, which may be considered the 
distinguishing mark of the highest literary genius. The men 
and women whom he has made are not stage-puppets moved 
by hidden strings ; they are real. We know them as inti- 
mately as the friends and acquaintances who visit us, or the 
people whom we accost in our daily walks. 

And again, in this varied delineation of character, Shak- 
speare less than any other author either obtrudes or repeats 
himself. Unlike Byron, he is nowhere his own hero : unlike 
most modern novelists, he fashions men who, while they 
have the generic human resemblance, differ from each other 
like those of flesh and blood around us : he has presented a 
hundred phases of love, passion, ambition, jealousy, revenge, 
treachery, and cruelty, and each distinct from the others of 
its kind ; but lest any character should degenerate into an 
allegorical representation of a single virtue or vice, he has 
provided it with the other lineaments necessary to produce in 
it a rare human identity. 

The stock company of most writers is limited, and does 
arduous duty in each new play or romance ; so that we detect 
in the comic actor, who is now convulsing the pit with laugh- 
ter, the same person who a little while ago died heroically to 
slow music in the tragedy. Each character in Shakspeare 
plays but one part, and plays it skilfully and well. And who 
has portrayed the character of woman like Shakspeare? — the 
grand sorrow of the repudiated Catharine, the incorruptible 
chastity of Isabella, the cleverness of Portia, the loves of 
Jessica and of Juliet, the innocent curiosity of Miranda, the 
broken heart and crazed brain of the fair Ophelia. 

In this connection also should be noticed his powers of 
grouping and composition ; which, in the words of one of 
his biographers, ''present to us pictures from the realms of 
spirits and from fairyland, which in deep reflection and in 
useful maxims, yield nothing to the pages of the philosophers, 
13^ 



150 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and which glow with all the poetic beauty that an exhaustless 
fancy could shower upon them." 

Imagination and Fancy. — And this brings us to notice, 
in the third place, his rare gifts of imagination and of fancy; 
those instruments of the representative faculty by which ob- 
jects of sense and of mind are held up to view in new, varied, 
and vivid lights. Many of his tragedies abound in imagina- 
tive pictures, while there are not in the realm of Fancy's fairy 
frostwork more exquisite representations than those found in 
the Tempest and the Midsummer Nighf s Dream. 

Power of Expression. — Fourth, Shakspeare is remark- 
able for the power and felicity of his expression. He adapts 
his language to the persons who use it, and thus we pass from 
the pompous grandiloquence of king and herald to the com- 
mon English and coarse conceits of clown and nurse and 
grave-digger ; from the bombastic speech of Glendower and 
the rhapsodies of Hotspur to the slang and jests of Falstaff. 

But something more is meant by felicity of expression than 
this. It applies to the apt words which present pithy bits of 
household philosophy, and to the beautiful words which con- 
vey the higher sentim.ents and flights of fancy ; to the simple 
words couching grand thoughts with such exquisite aptness 
that they seem made for each other, so that no other words 
would do as well, and to the dainty songs, like those of birds, 
which fill his forests and gardens with melody. Thus it is 
that orators and essayists give dignity and point to their own 
periods by quoting Shakspeare. 

Such are a few of Shakspeare's high merits, which consti- 
tute him the greatest poet who has ever used the English 
tongue — poet, moralist, and philosopher in one. 

His Faults. — If it be necessary to point out his faults, it 
should be observed that most of them are those of the age and 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. I5I 

of his profession. To both may be charged the vulgarity and 
lewdness of some of his representations; which, however, err 
in this respect far less than the writings of his contemporaries. 

Again : in the short time allowed for the presentation of a 
play, before a restless audience, as soon as the plot was fairly 
shadowed, the hearers were anxious for the denouement. And 
so Shakspeare, careless of future fame, frequently displays a 
singular disparity between the parts. He has so much of de- 
tail in the first two acts, that in order to preserve the sym- 
metry, five or six more would be necessary. Thus conclu- 
sions are hurried, when, as works of art, they should be the 
most elaborated. 

He has sometimes been accused of obscurity in expression, 
which renders some of his passages difficult to be understood 
by commentators ; but this, in most cases, is the fault of his 
editors. The cases are exceptional and unimportant. His 
anachronisms and historical inaccuracies have already been 
referred to. His greatest admirers will allow that his wit and 
humor are very often forced and frequently out of place ; but 
here, too, he should be leniently judged. These sallies of 
wit were meant rather to "tickle the ears of the groundlings" 
than as just subjects for criticism by later scholars. We know 
that old jokes, bad puns, and innuendoes are needed on the 
stage at the present day. Shakspeare used them for the same 
ephemeral purpose then ; and had he sent down corrected ver- 
sions to posterity, they would have been purged of these. 

Influence of Elizabeth. — Enough has been said to 
show in what manner Shakspeare represents his age, and 
indeed many former periods of English history. There are 
numerous passages which display the influence of Eliza- 
beth. It was at her request that he wrote the Merry Wives 
of Windsor, in which Falstaff is depicted as a lover.: the play 
of Henry VIIL, criticizing the queen's father, was not pro- 
duced imtil after her death. His pure women, like those of 
Spenser, are drawn after a queenly model. It is known that 



152 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Elizabeth was very susceptible to admiration, but did not 
wish to be considered so ; and Shakspeare paid the most del- 
icate and courtly tribute to her vanity, in those exquisite lines 
from the Midsummer Nighf s Dream, showing how powerless 
Cupid was to touch her heart: 

A certain aim he took 
At a fair vestal, throned by the west ; 
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon; 
And the impei^ial votaress passed on. 
In maiden meditation, fancy free. 

Shakspeare's Sonnets. — Before his time, the sonnet had 
been but little used in England, the principal writers being 
Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sidney, Daniel, and Drayton. 
Shakspeare left one hundred and fifty-four, which exhibit 
rare poetical power, and which are most of them addressed 
to a person unknown, perhaps an ideal personage, whose in- 
itials are W. H. Although chiefly addressed to a man, they 
are of an amatory nature, and dwell strongly upon human 
frailty, infidelity, and treachery, from which he seems to have 
suffered : the mystery of these poems has never been pene- 
trated. They were printed in 1609. '' Our language," says 
one of his editors, ''can boast no sonnets altogether worthy 
of being placed by the side of Shakspeare's, except the few 
which Milton poured forth — so severe and so majestic." 

It need hardly be said that Shakspeare has been translated 
into all modern languages, in whole or in part. In French, 
by Victor Hugo and Guizot, Leon de Wailly and Alfred de 
Vigny ; in German, by Wieland, A. W. Schlegel, and Biir- 
ger ; in Italian, by Leoni and Carcano, and in Portuguese by 
La Silva. Goethe's Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister is a 
long and profound critique of Hamlet ; and to the Germans 
he is quite as familiar and intelligible as to the English. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. I53 

Ireland : Collier. — The most celebrated forgery of Shak- 
speare was that by Samuel Ireland, the son of a Shakspearean 
scholar, who was an engraver and dealer in curiosities. He 
wrote two plays, called Voi'-tigern and Henry the Second, which 
he said he had discovered ; and he forged a deed with Shak- 
speare's autograph. By these he imposed upon his father and 
many others, but eventually confessed the forgery. 

One word should be said concerning the Collier contro- 
versy. John Payne Collier was a lawyer, born in 1789, and 
is known as the author of an excellent history of English 
Dramatic Poetry toJhe Time of Shakspeare, and Annals of the 
Stage to the Restoration. In the year 1849, ^^ came into 
possession of a copy of the folio edition of Shakspeare, pub- 
lished in \6Ty2, full of emendations, by an early owner of the 
volume. In 1852 he published these, and at once great en- 
thusiasm was excited, for and against the emendations : many 
thought them of great value, while others even went so far as 
to accuse Mr. Collier of having made some of them himself. 
The chief value of the work was that it led to new investiga- 
tions, and has thus thrown additional light upon the works of 
Shakspeare. 

Concordance. — The student is referred to a very com- 
plete concordance of Shakspeare, by Mrs. Mary Cowden 
Clarke, the labor of many years, by which every line of 
Shakspeare may be found, and which is thus of incalculable 
utility to the Shakspearean scholar. 

Other Dramatic Writers of the Age of Shakspeare. 

Ben Jonson, 1 573-1 637 : this great dramatist, who deserves a larger space, 
was born in London ; his father became a Puritan preacher, but after 
his death, his mother's second husband put the boy at brick-making. 
His spirit revolted at this, and he ran away, and served as a soldier in 
the Low Countries. On his return he killed Gabriel Spencer, a fellow- 
actor, in a duel, and was for some time imprisoned. His first play 
was a comedy entitled Every Man in his Humour, acted in 1598. This 



154 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

was succeeded, the next year, by Every Man out of his Humour. He 
wrote a great number of. both tragedies and comedies, among which the 
principal are Cynthia's Revels, Sejamis, Volpone, Catiline's Conspiracy, 
and The Alche?}iist. In 1616, he received a pension from the crown of 
one hundred marks, which was increased by Charles I,, in 1630, to 
one hundred pounds. He was the friend of Shakspeare, and had many 
wit-encounters with him. In these, Fuller compares Jonson to a great 
Spanish galleon, "built far higher in learning, solid and slow in per- 
formance," and Shakspeare to an " English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, 
but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take ad- 
vantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." 

Massinger, 1 548-1 640 : born at Salisbury. Is said to have written thirty- 
eight plays, of which only eighteen remain. The chief of these is the 
Virgin Martyr, in which he was assisted by Dekker. The best of the 
others are The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The 
Fatal Dozvry, The Unnatural Combat, and The Duke of Milan. A 
New Way to Pay Old Debts keeps its place upon the modern stage. 

John Ford, born 1586: author of The Lover'' s Melancholy , Love''s Sacrifice, 
Perkin Warbeck, and The Broken Heart. He was a pathetic deline- 
ator of love, especially of unhappy love. Some of his plots are unna- 
tural, and abhorrent to a refined taste. 

"Webster (dates unknown) : this author is remarkable for his handling of 
gloomy and terrible subjects. His best plays are The Devil's Law 
Case, Appius and Virginia, The Duchess of Malfy, and The White 
Devil. Hazlitt says " his White Devil and Duchess of Malfy come 
the nearest to Shakspeare of anything we have upon record." 

Francis Beaumont, 1586-1615, and John Fletcher, 1576-1625: joint 
authors of plays, numbering fifty-two. A prolific union, in which it is 
difficult to determine the exact authorship of each. Among the best 
plays are The Maid''s Tragedy, Philaster, and Cupid'' s Revenge. Many 
of the plots are licentious, but in monologues they frequently rise to 
eloquence, and in descriptions are picturesque and graphic. 

Shirley, 1594-1666: delineates fashionable life with success. His best 
plays are The Maid's Revenge, The Politician, and The Lady of Pleas- 
ure. The last suggested to Van Brugh his character of Lady Townly, 
in The Provoked Husband. Lamb says Shirley " was the last of a great 
race, all of whom spoke the same language, and had a set of moral 
feelings and notions in common. A new language and quite a new 
turn of tragic and comic interest came in at the Restoration," 

Thomas Dekker, died about 1638: wrote, besides numerous tracts, twen- 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 155 

ty-eight plays. The principal are Old Forfunafus, The Honest IVkore, 
and Satiro-Mastix, or. The Humorous Poet Untrussed. In the last, he 
satirized Ben Jonson, with whom he had quarrelled, and who had rid- 
iculed him in The Poetaster, In the Honest Whore are found those 
beautiful lines so often quoted : 

. . . the best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer ; 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed. 

Extracts from the plays mentioned may be found in Charles Lamb's 
"Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of 
Shakspeare." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

BACON, AND THE RISE OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 



Birth and Early Life. 


His Fall. ' 


His Defects. 


Treatment of Essex. 


Writes Philosophy. 


His Fame. 


His Appointments. 


Magna Instauratio. 


His Essays. 



Birth and Early Life of Bacon. 

CONTEMPORARY with Shakspeare, and almost equal 
to him in English fame at least, is Francis Bacon, the 
founder of the system of experimental philosophy in the Eliz- 
abethan age. The investigations of the one in the philosophy 
of human life, were emulated by those of the other in the 
realm of general nature, in order to find laws to govern fur- 
ther progress, and to evolve order and harmony out of chaos. 
Bacon was born in London, on the 2 2d of January, 1560-61, 
to an enviable social lot. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, 
was for twenty years lord keeper of the great seal, and was 
eulogized by George Buchanan as '' Diu Britannici regni 
secundum columen." His mother was Anne Cook, a person 
of remarkable acquirements in language and theology. Fran- 
cis Bacon was a delicate, attractive, and precocious child, 
noticed by the great, and kindly called by the queen "her 
little lord keeper." Ben Jonson refers to this when he writes, 
at a later day : 

England's high chancellor, the destined heir 
In his soft cradle to his father's chair. 

Thus, in his early childhood, he became accustomed to the 

■ 156 



BACON, AND THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. I57 

forms and grandeur of political power, and the modes by 
which it was to be striven for. 

In his thirteenth year he was entered at Trinity College, 
Cambridge, then, as nov/, the more mathematical and scien- 
tific of the two universities. But, like Gibbon at Oxford, he 
thought little of his alma mater, under whose care he re- 
mained only three years. It is said that at an early age he 
disliked the Logic of Aristotle, and began to excogitate his 
system of Induction: not content with the formal recorded 
knowledge, he viewed the universe as a great storehouse of 
facts to be educed, investigated, and philosophically class- 
ified. 

After leaving the university, he went in the suite of Sir 
Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador, to France ; and re- 
corded the observations made during his travels in a treatise 
On the State of Europe, which is thoughtful beyond his years. 
The sudden death of his father, in February, 1579-80, re- 
called him to England, and his desire to study led him to 
apply to the government for a sinecure, which would permit 
him to do so without concern as to his support. It is not 
strange — considering his youth and the entire ignorance of 
the government as to his abilities — that this was refused. 
He then applied himself to the study of the law; and what- 
ever his real ability, the jealousy of the Cecils no doubt 
prompted the opinion of the queen, that he was not very pro- 
found in the branch he had chosen, an opinion which was 
fully shared by the blunt and outspoken Lord Coke, who was 
his rival in love, law, and preferment. Prompted no doubt 
by the coldness of Burleigh, he joined the opposition headed 
by the Earl of Essex, and he found in that nobleman a pow- 
erful friend and generous patron, who used his utmost en- 
deavors to have Bacon appointed attorney-general, but with- 
out success. To compensate Bacon for his failure, Essex 
presented him with a beautiful villa at Twickenham on the 
Thames, which was worth ^2,000. 
'14 



158 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Treatment of Essex. — Essex was of a bold, eccentric, 
and violent temper. It is not to the credit of Bacon that 
when Essex, through his rashness and eccentricities, found 
himself arraigned for treason. Bacon deserted him, and did 
not simply stand aloof, but was the chief agent in his prose- 
cution. Nor is this all : after making a vehement and effec- 
tive speech against him, as counsel for the prosecution — a 
speech which led to his conviction and execution — Bacon 
wrote an uncalled-for and malignant paper, entitled '* A De- 
claration of the Treasons of Robert, Earl of Essex." 

A high-minded man would have aided his friend ; a cau- 
tious man would have remained neutral ; but Bacon was ex- 
travagant, fond of show, eager for money, and in debt : he 
sought only to push his own fortunes, without regard to justice 
or gratitude', and he saw that he had everything to gain from 
his servility to the queen, and nothing from standing by his 
friend. Even those who thought Essex justly punished, re- 
garded Bacon with aversion and contempt, and impartial his- 
tory has not reversed their opinion. 

His Appointments. — He strove for place, and he ob- 
tained it. In 1590 he was appointed counsel extraordinary 
to the queen : such was his first reward for this conduct, and 
such his first lesson in the school where thrift followed fawn- 
ing. In 1593 he was brought into parliament for Middlesex, 
and there he charmed all hearers by his eloquence, which 
has received the special eulogy of Ben Jonson. In his par- 
liamentary career is found a second instance of his truckling 
to power : in a speech touching the rights of the crown, he 
offended the queen and her ministers ; and as s*oon as he 
found they resented it, he made a servile and unqualified 
apology. 

At this time he began to write his Essays, which will be 
referred to hereafter, and published two treatises, one on The 
Common Law, and one on The Alienation Office. 



BACON, AND THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. I59 

In 1603 he was, by his own seeking, among the crowd of 
gentlemen knighted by James I. on his accession; and in 
1604 he added fortmie to his new dignity by marrying Alice 
Barnham, " sl handsome maiden," the daughter of a London 
alderman. He had before addressed the dowager Lady 
Hatton, who had refused him and bestowed her hand upon 
his rival. Coke. 

In 1613 he attained to the long-desired dignity of attorney- 
general, a post which he filled with power and energy, but 
which he disgraced by the torture of Peacham, an old clergy- 
man, who was charged with having written treason in a ser- 
mon which he never preached nor published. As nothing 
could be extorted from him by the rack. Bacon informed the 
king that Peacham " had a dumb devil." It should be some 
palliation of this deed, however, that the government was 
quick and sharp in ferretting out treason, and that torture 
was still authorized. 

In- 16 16 he was sworn of the privy council, and in the 
next year inherited his father's honors, being made lord 
keeper of the seal, principally through the favor of the favor- 
ite Buckingham. His course was still upward: in 1618 he 
was made lord high chancellor, and Baron Verulam, and the 
next year he was created Viscount St. Albans. Such rapid 
and high promotion marked his great powers, but it belonged 
to the period of despotism. James had been ruling without 
a parliament. At length the necessities of the government 
caused the king to summon a parliament, and the struggle 
began which was to have a fatal issue twenty-five years later. 
Parliament met, began to assert popular rights, and to exam- 
ine into the conduct of ministers and high officials ; and 
among those who could ill bear such scrutiny. Bacon was 
prominent. 

His Fall. — The charges against him were varied and 
numerous, and easy of proof He had received bribes ; he 



l6o ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

had given false judgments for money ; he had perverted jus- 
tice to secure the smiles of Buckingham, the favorite ; and 
when a commission was appointed to examine these charges 
he was convicted. With abject humility, he acknowledged 
his guilt, and implored the pity of his judges. The annals of 
biography present no sorrier picture than this. ''Upon ad- 
vised consideration of the charges," he wrote, ''descending 
into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account 
so far as I am able, I do plainly and ingenuously confess that 
I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence. O 
my lords, spare a broken reed ! ' * 

It is useless for his defenders, among whom the chief are 
Mr. Basil Montagu and Mr. Hepworth Dixon, to inform us 
that judges in that day were ill paid, and that it was the cus- 
tom to receive gifts. If Bacon had a defence to make and 
did not make it, he was a coward or a sycophant : if what he 
said is true, he was a dishonest man, an unjust judge. He 
was sentenced to pay a fine of ;£ 40,000, and to be imprisoned 
in the Tower at the king's pleasure : the fine was remitted, 
and the imprisonment lasted but two days, a result, no doubt 
foreseen, of his wretched confession. This was the end of his 
public career. In retirement, with a pension of ^£"1,200, 
making, with his other means, an anntaal income of ^2,500, 
this "meanest of mankind" set himself busily to work to 
prove to the world that he could also be the " wisest and 
brightest ; " ^ a duality of fame approached by others, but 
never equalled. He was, in fact, two men in one : a dis- 
honest, truckling politician, and a large-minded and truth- 
seeking philosopher. 

Begins his Philosophy. — Retired in disgrace from his 
places at court, the rest of his life was spent in developing 

1 If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined 
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind. 

Pope, Essay on Man. 



BACON, AND THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. l6l 

his Instauratio Magna, that revolution in the very principles 
and institutes of science — that philosophy which, in the words 
of Macaulay, "began in observations, and ended in arts." 
A few words will suffice to close his personal history. While 
riding in his coach, he was struck with the idea that snow 
would arrest animal putrefaction. He alighted, bought a 
fowl, and stuffed it with snow, with his own hands. He 
caught cold, stopped at the Earl of Arundel's mansion, and 
slept in damp sheets; fever intervened, and on Easter Day, 
1626, he died, leaving his great work unfinished, but in such 
condition that the plan has been sketched for the use of the 
philosophers who came after him. 

He is said to have made the first sketch of the Instauraiio 
when he was twenty-six years old, but it was much modified 
in later years. He fondly called it also Tc})iporis Partus 
Maximus, the greatest birth of Time. After that he wrote his 
Advancement of Learning in 1605, which was to appear in 
his developed scheme, under the title De Aiigmentis Scienti- 
aru7n, written in 1623. His work advanced with and was 
modified by his investigations. 

In 1620 he wrote the Novum Organum, which, when it 
first appeared, called forth from James I. the profane bon mot 
that it was like the peace of God, "because it passeth all un- 
derstanding." Thus he was preparing the component parts, 
and fitting them into his system, which has at length become 
quite intelligible. A clear notion of what he proposed to 
himself and what he accomplished, may be found in the sub- 
joined meagre sketch, only designed to indicate the outline 
of that system, which it will require long and patient study 
to master thoroughly. 

The Great Restoration, (Magna Instauratio.) — He 
divided it into six parts, bearing a logical relation to each 
other, and arranged in the proper order of study. 

I. , Survey and extension of the sciences, (^De Augmentis 
14* L 



l62 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Scienfiarum.) "Gives the substance or general description 
of the knowledge which mankind at present possesses.'^ That 
is, let it be observed, not according to the received system 
and divisions, but according to his own. It is a new present- 
ation of the existent state of knowledge, comprehending '-not 
only the things already invented and known, but also those 
omitted and wanted," for he says the intellectual globe, as 
well as the terrestrial, has its broils and deceits. 

In the branch ^' De Partitione Scientiarum,'" he divides all 
human learning \\\to History, which uses the memory; -Poetry, 
which employs the imagination; and Philosophy, which re- 
quires the reason : divisions too vague and too few, and so 
overlapping each other as to be of little present use. Later 
classifications into numerous divisions have been necessary to 
the progress of scientific research. 

II. Precepts for the interpretation of nature, (^Noviim Or- 
gannm.') This sets forth " the doctrine of a more perfect use 
of the reason, and the true helps of the intellectual faculties, 
so as to raise and enlarge the powers of the mind." "A 
kind of logic, by us called," he says, " the art of interpreting 
nature: differing from the common logic ... in three 
things, the end, the order of demonstrating, and the grounds 
of inquiry." 

Here he discusses induction ; opposes the syllogism ; shows 
the value and the faults of the senses — as they fail us, or de- 
ceive us — and presents in his idola the various modes and 
forms of deception. These idola, which he calls the deepest 
fallacies of the human mind, are divided into four classes : 
Idola Tribus, Idola Specus, Idola Fori, Idola Theatri. The 
first are the errors belonging to the whole human race, or 
tribe; the second — of the den — are the peculiarities of in- 
dividuals ; the third — - of the marketplace — are social and 
conventional errors ; and the fourth — • those of the theatre — 
include Partisanship, Fashion, and Authority. 

III. Phenomena of the Universe, or Natural and Experi- 
mental History, on which to found Philosophy^ {Sylva Sylvq- 



BACON, AND THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 163 

rum.') "Our natural history is not designed," he says, " so 
much to please by vanity, or benefit by gainful experiments, 
as to afford light to the discovery of causes, and hold out the 
breasts of philosophy." This includes his patient search for 
facts — nature />'(?(?, as in the history of plants, minerals, an- 
imals, etc. — nature put to the torture, as in the productions 
of art and human industry. 

IV. Ladder of the Understanding, {Scala Intellectus.) 
" Not illustrations of rules and precepts, but perfect models, 
which will exemplify the second part of this work, and repre- 
sent to the eye the whole progress of the mind, and the con- 
tinued structure and order of invention, in the most chosen 
subjects, after the same manner as globes and machines facil- 
itate the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in math- 
ematics." 

V. Precursors or anticipations of the second philosophy, 
{Prodromi sive anticipationes philosophi(z secuitdce.) " These 
will consist of such things as we have invented, experienced, 
or added by the same common use of the understanding that 
others employ " — a sort of scaffolding, only of use till the rest 
are finished — a set of suggestive helps to the attainment of this 
second philosophy, which is the goal and completion of his 
system. 

VI. Second Philosophy, or Active Science, {Fhilosophia 
SeciLnda.~) ''To this all the rest are subservient — to lay 
dowji that philosophy which shall flow from the just, pure, 
and strict inquiry hitherto proposed." "To perfect this is 
beyond both our abilities and our hopes ; yet we shall lay the 
foundations of it, and recommend the superstructure to pos- 
terity. ' ' 

An examination of this scheme will show a logical proces- 
sion from the existing knowledge, and from existing defects, 
by right rules of reason, and the avoidance of deceptions, 
with a just scale of perfected models, to the second philosophy y 
or sciejice in useful practical action, diffusing light and com- 
fort throughout the world. 



164 English: literature. 

In a philosophic instead of a literary work, these heads 
would require great expansion in order adequately to illus- 
trate the scheme in its six parts. This, however, would be 
entirely out of our province, which is to present a brief out- 
line of the works of a man who occupies a prominent place in 
the intellectual realm of England, as a profound philosopher, 
and as a writer of English prose ; only as one might introduce 
a great man in a crowd : those who wish to know the extent 
and character of his greatness must study his works. 

They were most of them written in Latin, but they have 
been ably translated and annotated, and are within the ready 
reach and comprehension of students. The best edition in 
English, is that by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, which has 
been republished in America. 

Bacon's Defects. — Further than this tabular outline, 
neither our space nor the scope of our work will warrant us 
in going ; but it is important to consider briefly the elements 
of Bacon's remarkable fame. His system and his knowledge 
are superseded entirely. Those who have studied physics 
and chemistry at the present day, know a thousand-fold more 
than Bacon could; for such knowledge did not exist in his 
day. But he was one of those — and- the chief one — who, 
in that age of what is called the childhood of experimental 
philosophy, helped to clear away the mists of error, and pre- 
pare for the present sunshine of truth. ''I have been labor- 
ing," says some writer, (quoted by Bishop Whately, Pref. 
to Essay XIV.,) "to render myself useless." Such was 
Bacon's task, and such the task of the greatest inventors, dis- 
coverers, and benefactors of the human race. 

Nor did Bacon rank high even as a natural philosopher 
or physicist in his own age : he seems to have refused cre- 
dence to the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, which 
had stirred the scientific world into great activity before his 
day; and his investigations in botany and vegetable physi- 
ology are crude and full of errors. 



PHILOSOPHY. 165 

His mind, eminently philosophic, searched for facts only 
to establish principles and discover laws ; and he was often 
impatient or obstinate in this search, feeling that it trammelled 
him in his haste to reach conclusions. 

In the consideration of the reason, he unduly despised the 
Organoii of Aristotle, which, after ranch indignity and mis- 
apprehension, still remains to elucidate the universal principle 
of reasoning, and published his new organon — Novum O?'- 
ganiim — as a sort of substitute for it : Induction unjustly op- 
posed to the Syllogism. In what, then, consists that wonder- 
ful excellence, that master-power whi^ch has made his name 
illustrious? 

His Fame. — I. He labored earnestly to introduce, in the 
place of fanciful and conjectural systems — careful, patient 
investigation : the principle of the procurement of well- 
known facts, in order that, by severe induction, philosophy 
might attain to general laws, and to a classification of the 
sciences. The fault of the ages before him had been hasty, 
careless, often neglected observation, inaccurate analysis, the 
want of patient successive experiment. His great motto 'was 
experiment, and again and again experiment; and the excellent 
maxims which he laid down for the proper conduct of experi- 
mental philosophy have outlived his own facts and system and 
peculiar beliefs. Thus he has fitly been compared to Moses. 
He led men, marshalled in strong array, to the vantage ground 
from which he showed them the land of promise, and the way 
to enter it; while he himself, after all his labors, was not 
permitted to enjoy it. Such men deserve the highest fame ; 
and thus the most practical philosophers of to-day revere the 
memory of him who showed them from the mountain-top, 
albeit in dim vision, the land which they now occupy. 

II. Again, Bacon is the most notable example among na- 
tural philosophers of a man who worked for science and 
truth alone, with a singleness of purpose and entire un- 
concern 'as to immediate and selfish rewards. Bacon the 



1 66 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

philosopher was in the strongest contrast to Bacon the politi- 
cian. He left, he said, his labors to posterity ; his name and 
memory to foreign nations, and *^to (his) own country, after 
some time is past over." His own time could neither appre- 
ciate nor reward them. Here is an element of greatness 
worthy of all imitation : he who works for popular applause, 
may have his reward, but it is fleeting and unsatisfying ; he 
who works for truth alone, has a grand inner consequence 
while he works, and his name will be honored, if for nothmg 
else, for this loyalty to truth. After what has been said of 
his servility and dishonesty, it is pleasing to contemplate this 
unsullied side of his escutcheon, and to give a better signifi- 
cance to the motto on his monument — Sic sedebat. 

His Essays. — Bacon's Essays, or Counsels Civil and 
Moral, are as intelligible to the common mind as his philos- 
ophy is dry and difficult. Ti:iey are short, pithy, sententious, 
telling us plain truths in simple language : he had been writ- 
ing them through several years. He dedicated them, under 
the title of Essays, to Henry, Prince of Wales, the eldest son 
of King James I., a prince of rare gifts, and worthy such a 
dedication, who unfortunately died in 1612. They show him 
to be the greatest master of English prose in his day, and to 
have had a deep insight into human nature. 

Bacon is said to have been the first person who applied the 
word essay in English to such writings: it meant, as the 
French word shows, a little trial-sketch, a suggestion, a few 
loose thoughts — a brief of something to be filled in by the 
reader. Now it means something far more — a long compo- 
sition, dissertation, disquisition. The subjects of the essays, 
which number sixty-eight, are such as are of universal interest 
— fame, studies, atheism, beauty, ambition, death, empire, 
sedition, honor, adversity, and suchlike. 

The Essays have been ably edited and annotated by 
Archbishop Whately, and his work has been republished in 
America. 



Earlj' Versions. 
The Septuagint 
The Vulgate. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 



Wiclif; Tyndale. i King James's Bible. 

Coverdale ; Cranmer. Language of the Bible. 



Geneva; Bishop's Bible. I Revision, 

Early Versions of the Scriptures. 

WHEN we consider the very extended circulation of 
the English Bible in the version made by direction 
of James I., we are warranted in saying that no work in the 
language, viewed simply as a literary production, has had a 
more powerful historic influence over the world of English- 
speaking people. 

Properly to understand its value a.s a version of the inspired 
writings, it is necessary to go back to the original history, and 
discover through what precedent forms they have come into 
English. 

All the canonical books of the Old Testament were written 
in Hebrew. The apocryphal books were produced either in 
a corrupted dialect, or in Greek. 

The Septuagint. — Limiting our inquiry to the canonical 
books, and rejecting all fanciful traditions, it is known that 
about 286 or 285 B. C, Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, 
probably at the instance of his librarian, Demetrius Phalereus, 
caused seventy-two Jews, equally learned in Hebrew and in 
Greek, to be brought to Alexandria, to prepare a Greek ver- 
sion of the Hebrew Scriptures. This was for the use of the 
Alexandrian Jews. The version was called the Septuagint, 
or translation of the seventy. The various portions of the 

167 



l68 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

translation are of unequal merit, the rendering of the Penta- 
teuch being the best j but the completed work was of great 
value, not only to the Jews dispersed in the countries where 
Greek had been adopted as the national language, but it 
opened the way for the coming of Christianity : the study of 
its prophecies prepared the minds of men for the great Advent, 
and the version was used by the earlier Christians as the his- 
toric ground of their faith. 

The books of the New Testament were written in Greek, 
with the probable exception of St. Matthew's Gospel, which, 
if written in Hebrew, or Aramsean, was immediately trans- 
lated into Greek. 

Contemporary with the origin of Christianity, and the vast 
extension of the Roman Empire, the Latin had become the 
all-absorbing tongue ; and, as might be expected, numerous 
versions of the whole and of parts of the Scriptures were made 
in that language, and one of these complete versions, which 
grew in favor, almost superseding all others, was called the 
Vctus Itala. 

The Vulgate. — St. Jerome, a doctor of the Latin Church 
in the latter part of the fourth century, undertook, with the 
sanction of Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, a new Latin ver- 
sion upon the basis of the Vetus liala, bringing it nearer to 
the Septuagint in the Old Testament, and to the original 
Greek of the New. 

This version of Jerome, corrected from time to time, was 
approved by Gregory L, (the Great,) and, since the seventh 
century, has been used by the Western Church, under the 
name of the Vulgate, (from vulgatus — for general or common 
use.) The Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, declared 
it alone to be authentic. 

Throughout Western Europe this was used, and made the 
basis of further translations into the national languages. It 
was from the Vulgate that Aldhelm made his Anglo-Saxon 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 169 

version of the Psalter in 706 ; Bede, his entire Saxon Bible in 
the same period ; Alfred, his portion of the Psalms; and other 
writers J fragmentary translations. 

As soon 3^ the newly formed English language was strong 
enough, partial versions were attempted in it : one by an un- 
known hand, as early as 1290; and one by John de Trevisa, 
about one hundred years later. 

WiCLiF: Tyndale. — Wiclif's Bible was translated from 
the Latin Vulgate, and issued about 1378. If it be asked 
why he did not go to the original sources, and thus avoid the 
errors of successive renderings, the answer is plain : he was 
not sufficiently acquainted with Hebrew and Greek to trans- 
late from them. Wiclif's translation was eagerly sought, and 
was multiplied by the hands of skilful scribes. Its popularity 
was very great, as is attested by the fact that when, in the 
House of Lords, in the year 1390, a bill was offered to sup- 
press it, the measure signally failed. The first copy of Wiclif's 
Bible was not printed until the year 1731. 

About a century after Wiciif, the Greek language and the 
study of Greek literature came into England, and were of great 
effect in making the forthcoming translations more accurate. 

First among these new translators was William Tyndale, 
who was born about the year 1477. He was educated at Ox- 
ford and Cambridge, and left England for fear of persecution. 
He translated the Scriptures from the Greek, and printed the 
volume at Antwerp — the first printed translation of the Scrip- 
tures in English — in the year 1526. This work was largely 
circulated in England. It was very good for a first transla- 
tion, and the language is very nearly that of King James's 
Bible. It met the fury of the Church, all the copies which 
could be found being burned by Tonstall, Bishop of London, 
at St. Paul's Cross. When Sir Thomas More asked how 
Tyndale subsisted abroad, he was pithily answered that Tyn- 
dale was supported by the Bishop of London, who sent over 



I/O ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

money to buy up his books. To the fame of being a trans- 
lator of the Scriptures, Tyndale adds that of martyrdom. He 
was seized, at the instance of Henry VKL, in Antwerp, and 
condemned to death by the Emperor of Germany. He was 
strangled in. the year 1536, at Villefort, near Brussels, pray- 
ing, just before his death, that the Lord would open the King 
of England's eyes. 

The Old Testament portion of Tyndale' s Bible is princi- 
pally from the Septuagint, and has many corruptions and er- 
rors, which have been corrected by more modern translators. 

Miles Coverdale : Cranmer's Bible. — In 1535, IMiles 
Coverdale, a co-laborer of Tyndale, published "Biblia; The 
Bible, that is, the Holy Scriptures of the Olde and New Tes- 
tament, faithfully and truly translated out of the Douche and 
Latyn into Englishe: Zurich." In the next year, 1536, Cov- 
erdale issued another edition, which was dedicated to Henry 
VIII. , who ordered a copy to be placed in every parish 
church in England. This translation is in part that of Tyn- 
dale, and is based upon it. Another edition of this appeared 
in 1537, and was called Matthew's Bible, probably a pseu- 
donym of Coverdale. Of this, from the beginning to the 
end of Chronicles is Tyndale's version. The rest of the Old 
Testament is Coverdale' s translation. The entire New Tes- 
tament is Tyndale's. This was published by royal license. 
Strange mutation ! The same king who had caused Tyndale 
to be strangled for publishing the English Scriptures at Ant- 
werp, was now spreading Tyndale's work throughout the par- 
ishes of England. Coverdale published many editions, among 
which the most noted was Cranmer's Bible, issued in 1539, 
so called because Cranmer wrote a preface to it. Coverdale 
led an eventful life, being sometimes in exile and prisoner, 
and at others in high favor. He was Bishop of Exeter, from 
which see he was ejected by Mary, in 1553. He died in 
1568, at the age of eighty-one. 

/ 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE. I/I 

The Genevan: Bishops' Bible. — In the year 1557 he 
had aided those who were driven away by Mary, in publishing 
a version of the Bible at Geneva. It was much read in Eng- 
land, and is known as the Genevan Bible. The Great Bible 
was an edition of Coverdale issued in 1562. The Bishops' 
Bible was so called because, at the instance of Archbishop 
Parker, it was translated by ^ royal commission, of whom 
eight were bishops. And in 15 71, a canon was passed at 
Canterbury, requiring a large copy of this work to be in every 
parish church, and in the possession of every bishop and dig- 
nitary among the clergy. Thus far every new edition and 
issue had been an improvement on what had gone before, and 
all tended to the production of a still more perfect and per- 
manent translation. It should be. mentioned that Luther, in 
Germany, after ten years of labor, from 1522 to 1532, had 
produced, unaided, his wonderful German version. This had 
helped the cause of translations everywhere. 

King James's Bible. — At length, in 1603, just after the 
accession of James L, a conference was held at Hampton 
Court, which, among other tasks, undertook to consider what 
objections could be made to the Bishops' Bible. The result 
was that the king ordered a new version which should super- 
sede ail others. The number of eminent and learned divines 
appointed to make the translation was fifty-four; seven of 
these were prevented by disability of one kind or another. 
The remaining forty-seven were divided into six classes, and 
the labor was thus apportioned : ten, who sat at Westminster, 
translated from Genesis through Kings ; eight, at Cambridge, 
undertook the other historical books and the Hagiographa, in- 
cluding the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, 
Ruth, Esther, and a few other books ; seven at Oxford, the 
four greater Prophets, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the 
twelve minor Prophets ; eight, also at Oxford, the four Gos- 
pels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation of St. John; 



1^2 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

seven more at Westminster, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the 
remaining canonical bopks; and five more at Cambridge, the 
Apocryphal books. The following was the mode of trans- 
lation : Each individual in one of the classes translated him- 
self every book confided to that class ; each class then met 
and compared these translations, and thus completed their 
task. The w^ork thus done was sent by each class to all the 
other classes ; after this, all the classes met together, and 
w^hile one read the others criticized. The translation was 
commenced in the year 1607, and \Yas finished in three years. 
The first public issue was in 161 1, when the book was dedi- 
cated to King James, and has since been known as King 
James's Bible. It was adopted not only in the English 
Church, but by all the English people, so that the other ver- 
sions have fallen into entire disuse, with the exception of the 
Psalms, which, according to the translation of Cranmer's 
Bible, were placed in the Book of Common Prayer, where 
they have since remained, constituting the Psalter. It should 
be observed that the Psalter, which is taken principally from 
the Vulgate, is not so near the original as the Psalms in King 
James's version : the language is, however, more musical and 
better suited to chanting in the church service. 

The Language of the Bible. — There hav.e been numer- 
ous criticisms, favorable and adverse, to the language of King 
James's Bible. It is said to have been written in older Eng- 
lish than that of its day, and Selden remarks that ''it is rather 
translated into English words than into English phrase." 
The Hebraisms are kept, and the phraseology of that language 
is retained. This leads to the opinion of Bishop Horsley, that 
the adherence to the Hebrew idiom is supposed to have at 
once enriched and adorned our language. Bishop Middleton 
says "the style is simple, it is harmonious, it is energetic, 
and, which is of no small importance, use has made it familiar, 
and time has rendered it sacred." That it has lasted two 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 173 

hundred and fifty years without a rival, is the strongest testi- 
mony in favor of its accuracy and the beauty of its diction. 
Philologically considered, it has been of inestimable value 
as a strong rallying-point for the language, keeping it from 
wild progress in any and every direction. Many of our best 
w^ords, which would otherwise have been lost, have been kept 
in current use because they are in the Bible. The peculiar 
language of the Bible expresses our most serious sentiments 
and our deepest emotions. It is associated with our holiest 
thoughts, and gives phraseology to our prayers. It is the lan- 
guage of heavenly things, but not only so : it is interwreathed 
in our daily discourse, kept fresh by our constant Christian 
services, and thus we are bound by ties of the same speech to 
the devout men of King James's day. 

Revision. — There are some inaccuracies and flaws in the 
translation which have been discerned by the superior ex- 
cellence of modern learning. In the question now mooted 
of a revision of the English Bible, the correction of these 
should be the chief object. A version in the language of the 
present day, in the course of time would be as archaic as the 
existing version is now ; and the private attempts which have 
been made, have shown us the great danger of conflicting 
sectarian views. 

In any event, it is to be hoped that those who authorize a 
new translation will emulate the good sense and judgment of 
King James, by placing it in the hands of the highest learn- 
ing, most liberal scholarship, and most devoted piety. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

JOHN MILTON, AND THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH. 



Other Prose Works. 
Effects of the Restoration. 
Estimate of his Prose. 



Historical Facts. Cromwell. 

Charles I. Birth and Early Works. 

Religious Extremes. Views of Marriage, 

Historical Facts. 

IT is Charles Lamb who says "Milton almost requires a 
solemn service to be played before you enter upon 
him. ' ' Of Milton, the poet of Paradise Lost, this is true ; 
but for Milton the statesman, the politician, and polemic, 
this is neither necessary nor appropriate. John Milton and 
the Common\vealth ! Until the present age, Milton has been 
regarded almost solely as a poet, and as the greatest imagina- 
tive poet England has produced ; but the translation and pub- 
lication of his prose works have identified him with the polit- 
ical history of England, and the discovery in 1823, of his 
Treatise on Christian Doctrine, has established him as one of 
the greatest religious polemics in an age when every theo- 
logical sect was closely allied to a political party, and thus 
rendered the strife of contending factions more bitter and 
relentless. Thus it is that the name of John Milton, as an 
author, is fitly coupled with the commonwealth, as a political 
condition. 

It remains for us to show that in all his works he was the 
strongest literary type of history in the age in which he lived. 
Great as he would have been in any age, his greatness is 
mainly English and historical. In his literary works may be 
traced every cardinal event in the history of that period : he 

174 



MILTON, AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 1/5 

aided in the establishment of the Commonwealth, and of that 
Commonwealth he was one of the principal characters. His 
pen was as sharp and effective as the sabres of Cromwell's 
Ironsides. 

A few words of preliminary history must introduce him to 
our reader. Upon the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, 
James I. ascended the throne with the highest notions of 
kingly prerogative and of a church establishment ; but the 
progress of the English people in education and intelligence, 
the advance in arts and letters which had been made, were 
vastly injurious to the autocratic and aristocratic system which 
James had received from his predecessor. His foolish arro- 
gance and contempt for popular rights incensed the people 
thus enlightened as to their own ^position and importance. 
They soon began to feel that he was not only unjust, but un- 
grateful : he had come from a rustic throne in Scotland, where 
he had received ^^^5,000 per annum, with occasional presents 
of fruits, grain, and poultry, to the greatest throne in Europe; 
and, besides, the Stuart family, according to Thackeray, ''as 
regards mere lineage, were no better than a dozen English 
and Scottish houses that could be named." 

They resisted his illegal taxes and forced loans ; they clam- 
ored against the unconstitutional Court of High Commission; 
they despised his arrogant favorites; and what they might 
have patiently borne from a gallant, energetic, and handsome 
monarch, they found it hard to bear from a pedantic, timid, 
uncouth, and rickety man, who gave them neither glory nor 
c6mfort. His eldest son, Prince Henry, the universal favor- 
ite of the nation, had died in 161 2, before he was eighteen. 

Charles I. — When, after a series of struggles with the 
parhament, which he had reluctantly convened, James died 
in 1625, Charles I. came to an inheritance of error and mis- 
fortune. Imbued with the principles of his father, he, too, 
insisted upon "governing the people of England in the sev- 



176 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

enteenth century as they had been governed in the sixteenth," 
while in reality they had made a century of progress. The 
cloud increased in blackness and portent; he dissolved the 
parliament, and ruled without one ; he imposed and collected 
illegal and doubtful taxes; he made forced loans, as his father 
had done ; he was artful, capricious, winding and doubling 
in his policy; he made promises without intending to perform 
them ; and found himself, finally, at direct issue with his par- 
liament and his people. First at war with the political prin- 
ciples of the court, the nation soon found itself in antagonism 
with the religion and morals of the court. Before the final 
rupture, the two parties were well defined, as Cavaliers and 
Roundheads : each party went to extremes, through the spite 
and fury of mutual opposition. The Cavaliers affected a 
recklessness and dissoluteness greater than they really felt to 
be right, in order to differ most widely from those purists who, 
urged by analogous motives, decried all amusements as evil. 
Each party repelled the other to the extreme of opposition. 

Religious Extremes. — Loyalty was opposed by radical- 
ism, and the invectives of both were bitter in the extreme. 
The system and ceremonial of a gorgeous worship restored 
by Laud, and accused by its opposers of formalism and idol- 
atry, were attacked by a spirit of excess, which, to religionize 
daily life, took the words of Scripture, and especially those 
of the Old Testament, as the language of common intercourse, 
which issued them from a gloomy countenance, with a nasal 
twang, and often with a false interpretation. 

As opposed to the genuflections of Laud and the pomp of 
his ritual, the land swarmed with unauthorized preachers; 
then came out from among the Presbyterians the Independ- 
ents ; the fifth-monarchy men, shouting for King Jesus ; the 
Seekers, the Antinomians, who, like Trusty Tomkins, were 
elect by the fore-knowledge of God, who were not under the 
law but under grace, and who might therefore gratify every 



MILTON, AND THE COMMONWEALTH. I// 

lust, and give the rein to every passion, because they were 
sealed to a certain salvation. Even in the army sprang up 
the Levellers, who wished to abolish monarchy and aristoc- 
racy, and to level all ranks to one. To each religious party, 
there was a political character, ranging from High Church 
and the divine right of kings, to absolute levellers in Church 
and State. This disintegrating process threatened not only 
civil war, with well-defined parties, but entire anarchy in the 
realm of England. It was long resisted by the conservative 
men of all opinions. At length the issue came : the king was 
a prisoner, without a shadow of power. 

The parliament was still firm, and would have treated with 
the king by a considerable majority ; but Colonel Pride sur- 
rounded it with two regiments, excluded more than tv/o hun- 
dred of the Presbyterians and m.oderate men ; and the par- 
liament, ihwi purged, appointed the High Court of Justice to 
try the king for treason. 

Charles I. fell before the storm. His was a losing cause 
from the day he erected his standard at Nottingham, in 1642, 
to that on which, after his noble bearing on the scaffold, the 
masked executioner held up his head and cried out, " This is 
the head of a traitor." 

With a fearful consistency the Commons voted soon after to 
abolish monarchy and the upper house, and on their new seal 
inscribed, "On the first year of freedom by God's blessing 
restored, 1648." The dispassionate historian of the present 
day must condemn both parties ; and yet, out of this fierce 
travail of the nation, English constitutional liberty was born. 

Cromwell. — The power which the parliament, under the 
dictation of the army, had so furiously wielded, passed into 
the hands of Cromwell, a mighty man, warrior, statesman, 
and fanatic, who mastered the crew, seized the helm, and 
guided the ship of State as she drove furiously before the 
wind. He became lord protector, a king in everything but 

M 



1/8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the name. We need not enter into an analysis of these par- 
ties : the history is better known than any other part of the 
English annals, and almost every reader becomes a partisan. 
Cromwell, the greatest man of his age, was still a creature of 
the age, and was led by the violence of circumstances to do 
many things questionable and even wicked, but with little 
premeditation : like Rienzi and Napoleon, his sudden eleva- 
tion fostered an ambition which robbed him of the stern pur- 
pose and pure motives of his earlier career. 

The establishment of the commonwealth seemed at first to 
assure the people's liberty ; but it was only in seeming, and 
as the sequel shows, they liked the rule of the lord protector 
less than that of the unfortunate king ; for, ten years after the 
beheading of Charles I., they restored the monarchy in the 
person of his son, Charles. 

Such, very briefly and in mere outline, was the political 
situation. And now to return to Milton: It is claimed that- 
of all the elements of these troublous times, he was the literary 
type, and this may be demonstrated — 

I. By observing his personal characteristics and political 
appointments. 

II. By the study of his prose works; and 

III. By analyzing his poems. 

Birth and Early \yoRKS. — John Milton was born on 
the 9th of December, 1608, in London. His grandfather, 
John iMylton, was a Papist, who disinherited his son, the 
poet's father, for becoming a Church-of-England man. His 
mother was a gentlewoman. Milton was born just in time to 
grow up with the civil troubles. Vv' hen the outburst came in 
1642, he was thirty-four years old, a solemn, cold, studious, 
thoughtful, and dogmatic Puritan. In 1624 he entered Christ 
College, Cambridge, where, from his delicate and beautiful 
face and shy airs, he was called the "Lady of the College." 
It is said that he left the university on account of peculiar 



MILTON, AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 1/9 

views in theology and politics ; but eight years after, in 1632, 
he took his degree as master of arts. Meanwhile, in Decem- 
ber, 1629, he had celebrated his twenty-first birthday, when 
the Star of Bethlehem was coming into the ascendant, with 
that pealing, organ-like hymn, " On the Eve of Christ's Na- 
tivity " — the worthiest poetic tribute ever laid by man, along 
with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of the Eastern sages, 
at the feet of the Infant God : ■ 

See how from far upon the Eastern road. 

The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet; 

O run, prevent them with thy humble ode, 
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; 
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet, 

And join thy voice unto the angel choir, 

From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire. 

Som.e years of travel on the Continent matured his mind, 
and gave full scope to his poetic genius. At Paris he became 
acquainted with Grotius, the illustrious writer upon public 
law; and in Rome, Genoa, Florence, and other Italian cities, 
he became intimate with the leading minds of the age. He 
returned to England on account of the political troubles. 



Milton's Views of Marriage. — In the consideration of 
Milton's personality, we do not find in him much to arouse 
our heart-sympathy. His opinions concerning marriage and 
divorce, as set forth in several of his prose writings, would, 
if generally adopted, destroy the sacred character of divinely 
appointed wedlock. His views may be found in his essay on 
The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce ; in his Tetrachordon, 
or the four chief places in Scripture, which treat of Marriage j 
or Nullities in Marriage ; in his Colastei'ion, and in his transla- 
tion of Martin ^nctx^s Judgment Concerning Divorce, addressed 
to the Parliament of England. AVhere women were con- 
cerned he was a hard man and a stern master. 

In 1643 he married Mary Powell, the daughter of a Cav- 



l80 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

alier; and, taking her from the gay life of her father's house, 
he brought her into a gloom and seclusion almost insupport- 
able/ He loved his books better than he did his wife. He fed 
and sheltered her, indeed, but he gave her no tender sympa- 
thy. Then was enacted in his household the drama of the 
rebellion in miniature ] and no doubt his domestic troubles 
had led to his extended discussion of the question of divorce. 
He speaks, too, almost entirely in the interest of husbands. 
With him woman is not complementary to man, but his in- 
ferior, to be cherished if obedient, to minister to her hus- 
band's welfare, but to have her resolute spirit broken after 
the manner of Petruchio, the shrew-tamer. In all this, how- 
ever, Milton was eminently a type of the times. It was the 
canon law of the established Church of England at which he 
aimed, and he endeavored to lead the parliament to legisla- 
tion upon the most sacred ties and relations of human life. 
Happily, English morals were too strong, even in that turbu- 
lent period, to yield to this unholy attempt. It was a day 
when authority was questioned, a day for '' extending the area 
of freedom," but he went too far even for emancipated Eng- 
land ; and the mysterious power of the marriage tie has always 
been reverenced as one of the main bulwarks of that righteous- 
ness which exalteth a nation. 

His apology for Smectymnuus is one of his pamphlets 
against Episcopacy, and receives its title from the initial let- 
ters of the names of five Puritan ministers, who also engaged 
in controversy : they were Stephen Marshall, Edward Cal- 
amy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcome, William Spenston. 
The Church of England never had a more intelligent and re- 
lentless enemy than John Milton. 

Other Prose Works. — Milton's prose works are almost 
all of them of an historical character. Appointed Latin Sec- 
retary to the Council, he wrote foreign dispatches and trea- 
tises upon the persons and events of the day. In 1644 he 



MILTON, AND THE COMMONWEALTH. l8l 

published his Areopagiiica, a noble paper in favor of Unli- 
cefised Printing, and boldly directed against the Presbyterian 
party, then in power, which had continued and even increased 
the restraints upon the press. No stouter appeal for the free- 
dom of the press was ever heard, even in America. But in 
the main, his prose pen was employed against the crown and 
the Church, while they still existed ; against the king's mem- 
ory, after the unfortunate monarch had fallen, and in favor 
of the parliament and all its acts. Milton was no trimmer ; 
he gave forth no uncertain sound ; he was partisan to the ex- 
treme, and left himself no loo^-hole of retreat in the change 
that was to come. 

A famous book appeared in 1649, not long after Charles's 
execution, proclaimed to have been written by King Charles 
while in prison, and entitled Eikon Basilike, or The Kingly 
Image, being the portraiture of his majesty in his solitude and 
suffering. It was supposed that it might influence the people 
in favor of royalty, and so Milton was employed to answer it 
in a bitter invective, an unnecessary and heartless attack upon 
the dead king, entitled Eikonoklastes, or TJie Image-breaker. 
The Eikon was probably in part written by the king, and in 
part by Bishop Gauden, who indeed claimed its authorship 
after the Restoration. 

Salmasius having defended Charles in a work of dignified 
and moderate tone, Milton answered in his first Defensio pi'o 
Popiilo AngUcano ; in which he traverses the whole ground of 
popular rights and kingly prerogative, in a masterly and elo- 
quent manner. This was followed by a second Defensio. 
For the two he received ;^ 1,000, and by his own account 
accelerated the disease of the eyes which ended in complete 
blindness. 

No pen in England worked more powerfully than his in 

behalf of the parliament and the protectorate, or to stay the 

flood tide of loyalty, which bore upon its sweeping heart the 

restoration of the second Charles. He wrote the last foreign 

16 



l82 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

despatches of Richard Cromwell, the weak successor of the 
powerful Oliver; but nothing could now avail to check the 
return of monarchy. The people were tired of turmoil and 
sick of blood ; they wanted rest, at any cost. The powerful 
hand of Cromwell was removed, and astute Monk used his 
army to secure his reward. The army, concurring with the 
popular sentiment, restored the Stuarts. The conduct of the 
English people in bringing Charles back stamped Cromwell 
as a usurper, and they have steadily ignored in their list of 
governors — called monarchs — the man through whose efforts 
much of their liberty had been achieved ; but history asserts 
itself, and the benefits of the ''Great Rebellion" are grate- 
fully acknowledged by the people, whether the protectorate 
appears in the court list or not. 

The Effect of the Restoration. — Charles II. came 
back to such an overwhelming reception, that he said, in his 
witty way, it must have been his own fault to stay away so 
long from a people who were so glad to see him when he did 
come. This restoration forced Milton into concealment : his 
public day was over, and yet his remaining history is partic- 
ularly interesting. Inheriting weak eyes from his mother, he 
had overtasked their powers, especially in writing the Defeii- 
siones, and had become entirely blind. Although his person 
was included in the general amnesty, his polemical works were 
burned by the hangman ; and the pen that had so powerfully 
battled for a party, now returned to the service of its first love, 
poetry. His loss of power and place was the world's gain. 
In his forced seclusion, he produced the greatest of English 
poems — religious, romantic, and heroic. 

Estimate of his Prose. — Before considering his poems, 
we may briefly state some estim.ate of his prose works. They 
comprise much that is excellent,' are full of learning, and 
contain passages of rarest rhetoric. He said himself, that in 



MILTON, AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 183 

prose he had only ^^the use of his left hand ; " but it was the 
left hand of a Milton. To the English scholar they are 
chiefly of historical value : many of them are written in Latin, 
and lose much of their terseness in a translation which retains 
classical peculiarities of form and phrase. 

His History of England from the Earliest Times is not 
profound, nor philosophical ; he followed standard chronicle 
authorities, but made fev/, if any, original investigations, and 
gives us little philosophy. His tractate on Education con- 
tains peculiar views of a curriculum of study, but is charm- 
ingly written. He also wrote a treatise on Logic. Little 
known to the great world outside of his poems, there is one 
prose work, discovered only in 1823, which has been less 
read, but which contains the articles of his Christian belief. 
It is a tractate on Christian doctrine : no one now doubts its 
genuineness ; and it proves him to have been a Unitarian, or 
High Arian, by his own confession. This was somewhat 
startling to the great orthodox world, who had taken many 
of their conceptions of supernatural things from Milton's 
Paradise Lost ; and yet a careful study of that poem will dis- 
close similar tendencies in the poet's mind. He was a Puri- 
tan whose theology was progressive until it issued in complete 
isolation : he left the Presbyterian ranks for the Independents, 
and then, startled by the rise and number of sects, he retired 
within himself and stood almost alone, too proud to be in- 
structed, and dissatisfied with the doctrines and excesses of 
his earlier colleagues. 

In 1653 he lost his wife, Mary Powell, who left him three 
daughters. He supplied her place in 1656, by marrying 
Catherine Woodstock, to whom he was greatly attached, and 
who also died fifteen months after. Eight years afterward he 
married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, who survived him. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE POETRY OF MILTON. 

The Blind Poet. 1 His Faults. 

Paradise Lost. Characteristics of the Age. 

Milton and Dante. I Paradise Regained. 

The Blind Poet. 



His Scholarship. 

His Sonnets. 

His Death and Fame. 



MILTON'S blindness, his loneliness, and his loss of 
power, threw him upon himself. His imagination, 
concentrated by these disasters and troubles, was to see higher 
things in a clear, celestial light : there was nothing to distract 
his attention, and he began that achievement which he had 
long before contemplated — a great religious epic, in which the 
heroes should be celestial beings and our sinless first parents, 
and the scenes Heaven, Hell, and the Paradise of a yet un- 
tainted Earth. His first idea was to write an epic on King 
Arthur and his knights: it is well for the world that he 
changed his intention, and took as a grander subject the loss 
of Paradise, full as it is of individual interest to mankind. 

In a consideration of his poetry, we must now first recur to 
those pieces which he had written at an earlier day. Before 
settling in London, he had, as we have seen, travelled fifteen 
months on the Continent, and had been particularly interested 
by his residence in Italy, where he visited the blind Galileo. 
The poems which most clearly show the still powerful influ- 
ence of Italy in all European literature, and upon him espe- 
cially, are the Arcades, Comus, L' Allegro, II Penseroso, and 
LycidaSy each beautiful and finished, and although Italian in 

184 



THE POETRY OF MILTON. I85 

their taste, yet full of true philosophy couched in charming 
verse. 

The Arcades, (Arcadians,) composed in 1684, is a pastoral 
masque, enacted before the Countess Dowager of Derby at 
Harefield, by some noble persons of her family. The Allegro 
is the song of Mirth, the nymph who brings with her 

Jest and youthful jollity, 

Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, 

Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 



Sport that wrinkled Care derides, 
And Laughter holding both his sides. 

The poem is like the nymph whom he addresses, 

Buxom, blithe, and debonaire. 

The Penseroso is a tribute to tender melancholy, and is 
designed as a pendant to the Allegro : 

Pensive nun devout and pure, 
Sober, steadfast, and demure, 
All in a robe of darkest grain, 
Flowing with majestic train. 

We fall in love with each goddess in turn, and find comfort 
for our varying moods from " grave to gay." 

Burke said he was certain Milton composed the Pensei'oso 
in the aisle of a cloister, or in an ivy-grown abbey. 

Comiis is a noble poem, philosophic and tender, but 
neither pastoral nor dramatic, except in form ; it presents the 
power of chastity in disarming Circe, Comics, and all the libid- 
inous sirens. L' Allegro and // Penseroso were written at 
Horton, about 1633. 

Lycidas, written in 1637, is a tender monody on the loss 

of a friend named King, in the Irish Channel, in that year, 

and is a classical pastoral, tricked off in Italian garb. What it 

loses in adherence to classic models and Italian taste, is more 

16* 



1 86 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

tlian made u\) by exquisite lines and felicitous phrases. In it 
he calls fame ''that last infirmity of noble mind." Perhaps 
he has nowhere written finer lines than these: 

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 

And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 

And tricks his beams, and with new -spangled ore 

FlatHcs in the forehead of the morning sly. 

Besides these, Milton wrote Latin poems with great vigor, 
if not with remarkable grace ; and several Italian sonnets and 
poems, whi(-h have been mnch admired even by Italian critics. 
The sonnet, if not of Italian origin, had been naturalized 
there when its birth was fcjrgotten ; and this practice in the 
Italian gave him that power to produce them in English which 
he afterward used with such effect. 

Paradise Lost. — Having thus summarily disposed of his 
minor poems, each of which would have immortalized any 
other man, we come to that upon which his highest fame 
rests; which is familiarly known by men who have never read 
the others, and who are ignorant of his prose works; which 
is used as a parsing exercise in many schools, and which, as 
we have before hinted, has furnished Protestant pulpits with 
pictorial theology from that day to this. It occupied him 
several years in the composition; from 1658, when Crom- 
well died, through the years of retirement and obscurity until 
1667. It came forth in an evil day, for the merry monarch 
was on the throne, and an irreligious court gave tone to pub- 
lic opinion. 

The hardiest critic must approach the Paradise Lost with 
wonder and reverence. What an imagination, and what a 
compass of imagination ! Now with the lost peers in Hell, 
his glowdng fancy projects an empire almost as grand and 
glorious as that of God himself. Now with undazzled, pre- 
sumptuous gaze he stands face to face with the Almighty, and 



THE POETRY OF MILTON. 187 

records the words falling from His lips; words which he has 
dared to place in the mouth of the Most High — words at the 
utterance of which 

. . . ambrosial fragrance filled 
All heaven, and in the blessed spirits elect 
Sense of new joy ineffable diffused. 

Little wonder that in his further flight he does not shrink 
from colloquy with the Eternal Son — in his theology not the 
equal of His Father — or that he does not fear to describe the 
fearful battle between Christ with his angelic hosts against the 
kingdom of darkness : 

... At his right hand victory 
Sat eagle-winged : beside him hung his bow 
And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored. 

. . . Them unexpected joy surprised, 
When the great ensign of Messiah blazed, 
Aloft by angels borne his sign in heaven. 

How heart-rending his story of the fall, and of the bitter 
sorrow of our first parents, whose fatal act 

Brought death into the world and all our woe, 
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat. 

How marvellous is the combat at Hell-gate, between Satan 
and Death ; how terrible the power at which " Hell itself 
grew darker " ! How we strive to shade our mind's eye as we 
enter again with him into the courts of Heaven. How re- 
freshingly beautiful the perennial bloom of Eden : 

Picta velut primo Vere coruscat humus. 

What a wonderful story of the teeming creation related to our 
first parents by the lips of Raphael : 



105 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

When from the Earth appeared 

The tawny lion, pawing to get free 

His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 

And rampant shakes his brinded mane. 

And withal, how compact the poem, how perfect the drama. 
It is Paradise, perfect in beauty and holiness; attacked with 
devilish art; in danger ; betrayed; lost! 

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked and ate ; 
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat. 
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe 
That all was lo>i ! 

Unit-like, complete, brilliant, sublime, awful, the ])ocm 
dazzles criticism, and belittles the critic. It is the grandest 
poem ever written. It almost sets up a competition with 
Scripture. Milton's Adam and Eve walk before us instead 
of the Adam and Eve of Genesis. Milton's Satan usurps the 
];lace of that grotesque, malignant spirit of the Bible, which, 
instead of claiming our admiration, excites only our horror, 
as he goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may 
devour. He it is who can declare 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. 
What matter where, if I be still the same, 
And what I should be? 

Milton and Dante. — It has been usual for the literary 
critic to compare Milton and Dante; and it is certain that in 
the conception, at least, of his great themes, Milton took 
Dante for his guide. Without an odious comparison, and 
conceding the great value, principally historical, of the Divina 
Conimedia, it must be said that the palm remains with the 
English poet. Take, for a single illustration, the fall of the 
arch-fiend. Dante's Lucifer falls with such force that he 
makes a conical hole in the earth to its centre, and forces out 
a hill on the other side — a physical prediction, as the anti- 



THE POETRY OF MILTON. Ibg 

podes had not yet been established. The cavity is the seat 
of Hell ; and the mountain, that of Purgatory. So math- 
ematical is his fancy, that in vignette illustrations we have 
right-lined drawings of these surfaces and their different cir- 
cles. Science had indeed progressed in Milton's time, but 
his imagination scorns its aid ; everything is with him grandly 
ideal, as well as rhetorically harmonious : 

. . . Him the Almighty power, 
Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion down 
T6 bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal power, 
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent in arms. 

And when a lesser spirit falls, what a sad ^olian melody 
describes the downward flight : 

. . . How he fell 
From Heaven they fabled thrown by angry Jove, 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements : from morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve 
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun, 
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star. 

The heavenly colloquies to which we have alluded between 
the Father and the Son, involve questions of theology, and 
present peculiar views — such as the subordination of the Son, 
and the relative unimportance of the third Person of the 
Blessed Trinity. They establish Milton's Arianism almost as 
completely as his Treatise on Christian Doctrine. 

His Faults. — Grand, far above all human efforts, his 
poems fail in these representations. God is a spirit ; he is 
here presented as a body, and that by an uninspired pen. 
The poet has not been able to carry us up to those infinite 
heights, and so his attempt only ends in a humanitarian phi- 
losophy : he has been obliged to lower the whole heavenly 



190 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

hierarchy to bring it within the scope of our objective com- 
prehension. He blinds our poor eyes by the dazzling efful- 
gence of that light which is 

... of the Eternal co-eternal beam. 

And it must be asserted that in this attempt Milton has done 
injury to the cause of religion, however much he has vindi- 
cated the power of the human intellect and the compass of 
the human imagination. He has made sensuous that w^hich 
was entirely spiritual, and has attempted with finite powers to 
realize the Infinite. 

The fault is not so great when he delineates created intelli- 
gences, ranging from the highest seraph to him who was only 
''less than archangel ruined." We gaze, unreproved by 
conscience, at the rapid rise of Pandemonium ; we watch 
with eager interest the hellish crew as they " open into the 
hill a spacious wound, and dig out ribs of gold." We ad- 
mire the fabric which springs 

. . . like an exhalation, with the sound 
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet. 

Nothing can be grander or more articulately realized than 
that arched roof, from which, 

Pendent by subtle magic, many a row 
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
With naphtha and asphaltus, yields the light 
As from a sky. 

It is an illustrative criticism that while the painter's art has 
seized these scenes, not one has dared to attempt his heavenly 
descriptions with the pencil. Art is less bold or more rever- 
ent than poetry, and rebukes the poet. 

Characteristics of the Age. — And here it is particu- 
larly to our purpose to observe, that in this very boldness of 
entrance into the holy of holies — in this attempted grasp 



THE POETRY OF MILTON. I9I 

with finite hands of infinite things, Milton was but a sublim- 
ated type of his age, and of the Commonwealth, when man, 
struggling for political freedom, Avent, as in the later age of 
the French Ilium inati, too far in the regions of spirit and of 
faith. As Dante, with a powerful satire, filled his poem with 
the personages of the day, assigning his enemies to the girone 
of the Inferno, so Milton vents his gentler spleen by placing 
cowls and hood and habits in the limbo of vanity and para- 
dise of fools : 

... all these upwhirled aloft 
Fly o'er the backside of the world far off, 
Into a limbo large and broad, since called 
The paradise of fools. 

It was a setting forth of that spirit which, when the Cava- 
liers were many of them formalists, and the Puritans many 
of them fanatics, led to the rise of many sects, and caused 
rude soldiers to bellow their own riotous fancies from the 
pulpit. In the suddenness of change, when the earthly 
throne had been destroyed, men misconceived what was due 
to the heavenly ; the fancy which had been before curbed by 
an awe for authority, and was too ignorant to move without 
it, now revelled unrebuked among the mysteries which are 
not revealed to angelic vision, and thus "fools rushed in 
where angels fear to tread." 

The book could not fail to bring him immense fame, but 
personally he received very little for it in money — less 
than ^20. 

Paradise Regained. — It was Thomias Ellwood, Milton's 
Quaker friend, who, after reading the Paradise Lost, sug- 
gested the Paradise Regained. This poem will bear no com- 
parison with its great companion. It may, without irrever- 
ence, be called "The gospel according to John Milton." 
Beauties it does contain ; but the very foundation of it is false. 
Milton makes man regain Paradise by the success of Christ in 
withstanding the Devil's temptations in the wilderness; a 



192 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

new presentation of his Arian theology, which is quite trans- 
cendental ; whereas, in our opinion, the gate of Paradise was 
opened only ^' by His precious death and burial ; His glorious 
resurrection and ascension ; and by the coming of the Holy 
Ghost." But if it is immeasurably inferior in its conception 
and treatment, it is quite equal to the Paradise Lost in its 
execution. 

A few words as to Milton's vocabulary and style must close 
our notice of this greatest of English poets. With regard to 
the first, the Latin element, which is so manifest in his prose 
works, largely predominates in his poems, but accords better 
with the poetic license. In a list of authors which Mr. Marsh 
has prepared, down to Milton's time, which includes an 
analysis of the sixth book of the Paradise Lost, he is found 
to employ only eighty per cent, of Anglo-Saxon words — less 
than any up to that day. But his words are chosen with a 
delicacy of taste and ear which astonishes and delights ; his 
works are full of an adaptive harmony, the suiting of sound 
to sense. His rhythm is perfect. We have not space for ex- 
tended illustrations, but the reader will notice this in the 
lady's song in Comus — the address to 

Sweet Echo, sweeter nymph that liv'st unseen 
Within thy airy shell, 
By slow Meander's margent green ! 



Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere, 

So may'st thou be translated to the skies, 

And give resounding grace to all heaven's harmonies. 

And again, the description of Chastity, in the same poem, is 
inimitable in the language: 

So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity, 
That when a soul is found sincerely so, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her. 

His Scholarship. — It is unnecessary to state the well- 
known fact, attested by all his works, of his elegant and ver- 



THE POETRY OF MILTON. I93 

satile scholarship. He was the most learned man in England 
in his day. If, like J. C. Scaliger, he did not commit Homer 
to memory in twenty-one days, and the whole of the Greek 
poets in three months, he had all classical learning literally at 
his fingers' ends, and his works are absolutely glistening with 
drops which show that every one has been dipped in that 
Castalian fountain which, it Avas fabled, changed the earthly 
flowers of the mind into immortal jewels. 

Nor need we refer to what every one concedes, that a vein 
of pure but austere morals runs through all his v/orks ; but 
Puritan as he was, his myriad fancy led him into places which 
Puritanism abjured : the cloisters, with their dim religious 
light, in II Feuseroso — and anon with mirth he cries: 

Come and trip it as you go, 
Oxi the light fantastic toe. 

Sonnets, — His sonnets have been variously estimated : 
they are not as polished as his other poem.s, but are crystal- 
like and sententious, abrupt bursts of opinion and feeling in 
fourteen lines. Their masculine power it was which caused 
Wordsworth, himself a prince of sonneteers, to say ; 

In his hand, 
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 
Soul-animating strains . . . 

That to his dead wife, whom he saw in a vision \ that to 
Cyriac Skinner on his blindness, and that to the persecuted 
Waldenses, are the most known and appreciated. That to 
Skinner is a noble assertion of heart and hope : 

Cyriac, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear 
To outward view, of blemish and of spot, 
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot : 

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, 
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 

Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
17 N 



194 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Right onward. "What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
The conscience friend to have lost them over-plied 

In liberty's defence, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe talks from side to side. 

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask 
Content, though blind, had I no better guide. 

Milton died in 1674, of gout, which had long afflicted him; 
and he left his name and works to posterity. Posterity has 
done large but mistaken justice to his fame. Men have not dis- 
criminated between his real merits and his faults : all parties 
have conceded the former, and conspired to conceal the lat- 
ter. A. just statement of both will still establish his great 
fame on the immutable foundations of truth — a fame, the 
honest pursuit of which caused him, throughout his long life, 

To scorn delights, and live laborious days. 

No writer has ever been the subject of more uncritical y ig- 
norant, and senseless panegyric : like Bacon, he is lauded by 
men w^ho never read his works, and are entirely ignorant of 
the true foundation of his fame. Nay, more ; partisanship be- 
comes very warlike, and we are reminded in this controversy 
of the Italian gentleman, w^ho fought three duels in maintain- 
ing that Ariosto was a better poet than Tasso : in the third 
he was mortally wounded, and he confessed before dying that 
he had never read a line of either. A similar logomachy has 
marked the course of Milton's champions; words like sharp 
swords have been wielded by ignorance, and have injured the 
poet's true fame. 

He now stands before the world, not only as the greatest 
English poet, except Shakspeare, but also as the most remark- 
able example and illustration of the theory we have adopted, 
that literature is a very vivdd and permanent interpreter of 
contemporary history. To those vrho ask for a philosophic 
summary of the age of Charles I. and Cromwell, the answer 
may be justly given : "■ Study the w^orks of John Milton, 
and you will find it." 



CHAPTER XX. 



COWLEY, BUTLER, AND WALTON, 



Cowley and Milton. 
Cowley's Life and Works. 
His Fame. 



Butler's Career. 

Hudibras. 

His Poverty and Death. 



Izaak Walton. 

The Angler ; and Lives. 

Other Writers. 



'Cowley and Milton. 

IN contrast with Milton, in his own age, both in political 
tenets and in the character of his poetry, stood Cowley, 
the poetical champion of the party of king and cavaliers 
during the civil war. Historically he belongs to two periods 
— antecedent and consequent — that of the rebellion itself, 
and that of the Restoration : the latter was a reaction from 
the former, in which the masses changed their opinions, in 
which the Puritan leaders were silenced, and in which the 
constant and consistent Cavaliers had their day of triumph. 
Both parties, however, modified their views somewhat after 
the whirlwind of excitement had swept by, and both depre- 
cated the extreme violence of their former actions. This is 
cleverly set forth in a charming paper of Lord Macaulay, en- 
titled Cowley and Milton. It purports to be the report of a 
pleasant colloquy between the two in the spring of 1665, 
"set down by a gentleman of the Middle Temple." Their 
principles are courteously expressed, in a retrospective view 
of the great rebellion. 



Cowley's Life and Works. — Abraham Cowley, the post- 
humous son of a grocer, was born in London, in the year 
1 6 18. He is said to have been so precocious that he read 

195 



196 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Spenser with pleasure when he was twelve years old ; and he 
published a volume of poems, entitled " Poetical Blossoms," 
before he was fifteen. After a preliminary education at West- 
minster school, he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
in 1636, and while there he published, in 1638, two come- 
dies, one in English, entitled Love' s Riddle, and one in 
Latin, Naufragium Jocidare, or. The Merry Shipwreck. 

When the troubles which culminated in the civil war began 
to convulse England, Cowley, who was a strong adherent of 
the " king, was compelled to leave Cambridge ; and v/e find 
him, when the war had fairly opened, at Oxford, where he 
was well received by the Royal party, in 1643. ^^ vindi- 
cated the justice of this reception by publi-shing in that year a 
satire called Piiritajt and Papist. Upon the retirement of 
the queen to Paris, he was one of her suite, and as secretary 
to Viscount St. Albans he conducted the correspondence- in 
cipher between the queen and her unfortunate husband. 

He remained abroad during the civil war and the protec- 
torate, returning with Charles IL in 1660. ''The Blessed 
Restoration " he celebrated in an ode wnth that title, and 
would seem to have thus established a claim to the king's 
gratitude and bounty. But he v/as mistaken. Perhaps this 
led him to write a comedy, entitled The Cutter of Coleman 
Street, in which he severely censured the license and debauch.- 
eries of the court: this made the arch-debauchee, the king 
himself, cold toward the poet, who at once issued A Com- 
plaint ; but neither satire nor complaint helped him to the 
desired preferment. He quitted London a disappointed man, 
and retired to the country, where he died on the 28th of 
July, 1667. 

His poems bear the impress of the age in a remarkable de- 
gree. His Mistress, or, Love Verses, and his other Anacreon- 
tics or paraphrases of Anacreon's odes, were eminently to the 
taste of the luxurious and immoral court of Charles H. His 
Davideis is an heroic poem on the troubles of King David. 



cow LEY, 



197 



His Poe?n on the Late Civil War, which was not publislied 
until 1679, twelve years after his death, is written in the in- 
terests of the monarchy. 

His varied learning gave a wide range to his pen. In 1661 
appeared his Proposition for the Advancejnent of Experimen- 
tal Philosophy, which was followed in the next year by Two 
Books of Plants, which he increased to six books afterward 
— devoting two to herbs, two to flowers, and two to trees. 
If he does not appear in them to be profound in botanical 
researches, it was justly said by Dr. Johnson that in his mind 
'* botany turned into poetry." 

His prose pen was as ready, versatile, and charming as his 
poetic pencil. He produced discourses or essays on com- 
monplace topics of general interest, such as myself ; the 
shortness of life ; the uncertainty of ricJies ; the danger of pro- 
crasti?iation, etc. These are well written, in easy-flowing 
language, evincing his poetic nature, and many of them are 
more truly poetic than his metrical pieces. 



His Fame. — Cowley had all his good things in his life- 
time; he was the most popular poet in England, and is the 
best illustration of the literary taste of his age. His poetry is 
like water rippling in the sunlight, brilliant but dazzling and 
painful : it bewilders with far-fetched and witty conceits : 
varied but full of art, there is little of nature or real passion 
to be found even in his amatory verses. He suited the taste 
of a court which preferred an epigram to a proverb, and a 
repartee to an apothegm ; and, as a consequence, with the 
growth of a better culture and a better taste, he has steadily 
declined in favor, so that at the present day he is scarcely read 
at all. Two authoritative opinions mark the history of this 
decline : Milton, in his own day, placed him with Spenser 
and Shakspeare as one of the three greatest English poets; 
while Pope, not much m.ore than half a century later, asks : 
17* 



190 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet, 
His moral pleases, not his pointed wdt. 

Still later, Dr. Johnson gives him the credit of having been 
the first to master the Pindaric ode in English ; while Cowper 
expresses, in his Task, regret that his "splendid wit " should 
have been 

Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools. 

But if he is neglected in the present day as a household poet, 
he stands prominently forth to the literary student as an his- 
toric personage of no mean rank, a type and representative of 
his age, country, and social conditions. 

Samuel Butler. 

Butler's Career. — The author of Hudibras, a satirical 
poem which may as justly be called a comic history of Eng- 
land as any of those written in prose in more modern times, 
was born in Worcestershire, on the 8th of February, 161 2. 
The son of poor parents, he received his education at a gram- 
mar school. Some, who have desired to magnify his learn- 
ing, have said that he was for a time a student at Cambridge ; 
but the chronicler Aubrey, who knew him well, denies this. 
He was learned, but this was due to the ardor with which he 
pursued his studies, when he was clerk to Mr. Jeffreys, an 
eminent justice of the peace, and as an inmate of the mansion 
of the Countess of Kent, in whose fine library he was asso- 
ciated with the accomplished Selden. 

We next find him domiciled with Sir Samuel Luke, a Pres- 
byterian and a parliamentary soldier, in whose household he 
saw and noted those characteristics of the Puritans which he 
afterward ridiculed so severely in his great poem, a poem 
which he was quietly engaged in writing during the protec- 
torate of Cromwell, in hope of the coming of a day when it 
could be issued to the v/orld. 

This hope was fulfilled by the Restoration. In the new 



BUTLER. 199 

order he was appointed secretary to the Earl of Carbery, 
and steward of Ludlow Castle; and he also increased his fru- 
gal fortunes by marrying a widow, Mrs. Herbert, whose 
means, however, were soon lost by bad investments. 

HuDiBRAS. — The only work of merit which Butler pro- 
duced was Hudibras. This was published in three parts : the 
first appeared in 1663, the second in 1664, and the third not 
until 1678. Even then it was left unfinished; but as the in- 
terest in the third part seems to flag, it is probable that the 
author did not intend to complete it. His death, two years 
later, however, settled the question. 

The general idea of the poem is taken from Don Quixote. 
As in that immortal work, there are two heroes. Sir Hudi- 
bras, corresponding to the Don, is a Presbyterian justice of 
the peace, whose features are said to have been copied from 
those of the poet's former employer. Sir Samuel Luke. For 
this, Butler has been accused of ingratitude, but the nature of 
their connection does not seem to have been such as to war- 
rant the charge. Ralph the squire, the humble Sancho of 
the poem, is a cross-grained dogmatic Independent. 

These two the poet sends forth, as a knight-errant with a 
squire, to correct existing abuses of all kinds — political, reli- 
gious, and scientific. The plot is rambling and disconnected, 
but the author contrives to go over the whole ground of Eng- 
lish history in his inimitable burlesque. Unlike Cervantes, 
who makes his reader always sympathize with his foolish 
heroes, Butler brings his knight and squire into supreme con- 
tempt ; he lashes the two hundred religious sects of the day, 
and attacks with matchless ridicule all the Puritan positions. 
The poem is directly historical in its statement of events, 
tenets, and factions, and in its protracted religious discus- 
sions : it is indirectly historical in that it shows how this ridi- 
cule of the Puritans, only four years after the death of Crom- 
well, delighted the merry mionarch and his vicious court, and 



200 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

was greatly acceptable to the large majority of the English 
people. This fact marks the suddenness of the historic 
change from the influence of Puritanism to that of the restored 
Stuarts. 

Hudibras is written in octosyllabic verse, frequently not 
rising above doggerel : it is full of verbal "quips and cranks 
and wanton wiles:" in parts it is eminently epigrammatic, 
and many of its happiest couplets seem to have been dashed 
off without eifort. Walpole calls Butler " the Hogarth of 
poetry; " and we know that Hogarth illustrated Hudibras. 
The comparison is not inapt, but the pictorial element in 
Hudibras is not its best claim to our praise. This is found in 
its string of proverbs and maxims elucidating human nature, 
and set forth in such terse language that we are inclined to 
use them thus in preference to any other form of expression. 

Hudibras is the very prince of buj'lesqiies ; it stands alone 
of its kind, and still retains its popularity. Although there is 
much that belongs to the age, and much that is of only local 
interest, it is still read to find apt quotations, of which not a 
few have become hackneyed by constant use. With these, 
pages might be filled ; all readers v/ill recognize the following : 

He speaks of the knight thus : 

On either side he would dispute, 
Confute, change hands, and still confute : 



For rhetoric, he could not ope 

His mouth but out there flew a trope. 

Again : he refers, in speaking of religious characters, to 

Such as do build their faith upon 
The holy text of pike and gun, 
And prove their doctrine orthodox, 
By apostolic blows and knocks ; 
Compound for sins they are inclined to 
By damning those they have no mind to. 



BUTLER. 201 

Few persons of the present generation have patience to read 
Huclibras through. Allibone says "it is a work to be stu- 
died once and gleaned occasionally." Most are content to 
glean frequently, and not to study at all. 

His Poverty and Death. — Butler lived in great poverty, 
being neglected by a monarch and a court for whose amuse- 
ment he had done so much. They laughed at the jester, and 
let him starve. Indeed, he seems to have had few friends; and 
this is accounted for quaintly by Aubrey, who says : " Satir- 
ical wits disoblige whom they converse with, and consequently 
make to themselves many enemies, and few friends ; and this 
was his manner and case." 

The best known of his w^orks, after Hudibras, is the Ele- 
phant in the Mooii. a satire on the Royal Society. 

It is significant of the popularity of Hudibras, that numer- 
ous imitations of it have been written from his day to ours. 

Butler died on the 25th of September, 1680. Sixty years 
after, the hand of private friendship erected a monument to 
him in Westminster Abbey. The friend vv^as John Barber, 
Lord Mayor of London, whose object is thus stated : "That 
he who was destitute of all things when alive, might not want 
a monument when he was dead." Upon the occasion of 
erecting this, Samuel Wesley wrote : 

While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, 

No generous patron would a dinner give ; 

See him, when starved to death and turned to dust, 

Presented with a monumental bust. 

The poefs fate is here in emblem shown, 

He asked for bread, and he received a stone. 

To his own age he was the prince of jesters ; to English liter- 
ature he has given its best illustration of the burlesque in rhet- 
oric. To the reader of the present day he presents rare his- 
torical pictures of his day, of far greater value than his wit or 
his burlesque. 



202 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

IzAAK Walton. 

If men are to be measured by their permanent popularity, 
Walton deserves an enthusiastic mention in literary annals, 
not for the greatness of his achievements, but for his having 
touched a chord in the human heart which still vibrates with- 
out hint of cessation wherever English is spoken. 

Izaak Walton was born at Stafford, on the 9th of August, 
1593. In his earlier life he was a linen-draper, but he had 
made enough for his frugal wants by his shop to enable him 
to retire from business in 1643, ^^^ then he quietly assumed 
a position as pontifex piscatoi'um. His fishing-rod was a 
sceptre which he swayed unrivalled for forty years. He 
gathered about him in his house and on the borders of fishing 
streams an admiring and congenial circle, principally of the 
clergy, who felt it a privilege to honor the retired linen- 
draper. There must have been a peculiar charm, a personal 
magnetism about him, which has also imbued his works. His 
first wife was Rachel Floud, a descendant of the ill-fated 
Cranmer; and his second was Anne Ken, the half-sister of 
the saintly Bishop Ken. Whatever may have been his defi- 
ciencies of early education, he was so constant and varied a 
reader that he made amends for these. 

The Complete Angler. — His first and most popular 
work was The Complete Angler, or, The Contemplative Maji' s 
Recreation. It has been the delight of all sorts of people 
since, and has gone through more than forty respectable edi- 
tions in England, besides many in America. Many of these 
editions are splendidly illustrated and sumptuous. The dia- 
logues are pleasant and natural, and his enthusiasm for the art 
of angling is quite contagious. 

His Lives. — Nor is Walton less esteemed by a smaller but 
more appreciative circle for his beautiful and finished biog- 



IZAAK WALTON. 203 

raphies or Lives of Dr. Donne, Wotton, Richard Hooker, 
George Herbert, and Bishop Robert Sanderson. 

Here Walton has bestowed and received fame : the simple 
but exquisite portraitures of these holy and worthy men have 
made them familiar to posterity ; and they, in turn, by the 
virtues which Walton's pen has made manifest, have given 
distinction to the hand which portrayed them. Walton's good 
life was lengthened out to fourscore and ten. He died at the 
residence of his son-in-law, the Reverend William Hawkins, 
prebendary of Winchester Cathedral, in 1683. Bishop Jebb 
has judiciously said of his Lives : " They not only do ample 
justice to individual piety and learning, but throw a mild and 
cheerful light upon the manners of an interesting age, as well 
as upon the venerable features of our mother Church." Less, 
however, than any of his contemporaries can Walton be ap- 
preciated by a sketch of the man : his works must be read, 
and their spirit imbibed, in order to know his worth. 

Other Writers of the Age. 

George Wither, bom in Hampshire, June 11, 1588, died May 2, 1667: 
he was a voluminous and versatile writer. His chief work is The 
Shepherd'' s Hunting, which, with beautiful descriptions of rural life, 
abounds in those strained efforts at wit and curious conceits, which 
were acceptable to the age, but which have lost their chaiTn in a more 
sensible and philosophic age. Wither was a Parliament man, and was 
imprisoned and ill-treated after the Restoration. He, and most of those 
who follow, were classed by Dr. Johnson as metaphysical poets. 

Francis Quarles, 1 592-1 644: he was a Royalist, but belongs to the literary 
school of Withers. He is best known by his collection of moral and 
religious poems, called Divine Emblems, which were accompanied with 
quaint engraved illustrations. These allegories are full of unnatural 
conceits, and are many of them borrowed from an older source. He 
was immensely popular as a poet in his own day, and there was truth 
in the statement of Horace Walpole, that " Milton was forced to wait 
till the world had done admiring Quarles." 

George Herbert, 1593-1632: a man of birth and station, Herbert entered 
the Church, and as the incumbent of the Hvinsf at Bemerton, he illus- 



204 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

trated in his own piety and devotion "the beauty of holiness," Con- 
scientious and self-denying in his parish work, he found time to give 
forth those devout breathings which in harmony of expression, fervor 
of piety, and simplicity of thought, have been a goodly heritage to the 
Church ever since, while they still retain some of those " poetical sur- 
prises " which mark the literary taste of the age. His principal work 
is The Temple^ or. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. The short 
lyrics which form the stones of this temple are upon the rites and cer- 
emonies of the Church and other sacred subjects: many of them are 
still in great favor, and will always be. In his portraiture of the Good 
Parson, he paints himself. He magnifies the office, and he fulfilled all 
the requirements he has laid down. 

Robert Herrick, 1591-1674: like Herbert, Herrick was a clergyman, but, 
unlike Herbert, he was not a holy man. He wrote Anacreontic poems, 
full of wine and love, and appears to us like a reveller masking in a 
surplice. Being a cavalier in sentiment, he was ejected from his vicar- 
age in 1648, and went to London, where he assumed the lay habit. In 
1647 he published Hesperides, a collection of small poems of great lyric 
beauty, Anacreontic, pastoral, and amatory, but containing much that is 
coarse and indelicate. In 1648 he in part atoned for these by publish- 
ing his Noble Ahiinbers, a collection of pious pieces, in the beginning of 
which he asks God's forgiveness for his " unbaptized rhymes," " writ 
in my wild, unhallowed times." The best comment upon his works 
may be found in the words of a i-eviewer : " Herrick trifled in this way 
solely in compliment to the age ; whenever he wrote to please himself, 
he wrote from the heart to the heart." His Litanie is a noble and 
beautiful penitential petition. 

Sir John Suckling, 1609-1641 : a writer of love songs. That by which 
he is most favorably known is his exquisite Ballad upon a Wedding. 
He was a man of versatile talents ; an officer in the army of Gustavus 
Adolphus, and a captain of horse in the army of Charles I. He wrote 
several plays, of which the best are Aglaura and The Discontented 
Colonel. While evidently tinctured by the spirit of the age, he exceeded 
his contemporaries in the purity of his style and manliness of his ex- 
pression. His wit is not so forced as theirs. 

Edmund Waller, 1 605-1 687 : he was a cousin of John Hampden. By 
great care and adroitness he seems to have trimmed between the two 
parties in the civil war, but was suspected by both. His poetry was 
like himself, artificial and designed to please, but has -little depth of 
sentiment. Like other poets, he praised Cromwell in 1654 in A Pan- 



COWLEY, BUTLER, AND WALTON. 20$ 

egyric, and welcomed Charles IL in 1660, upon His ]\Tajesty'^s Happy 
Return. His greatest benefaction to English poetry was in refining 
its language and harmonizing its versification. He has all the conceits 
and strained wit of the metaphysical school. 

Sir William Davenant, 1605-1668: he was the son of a vintner, but some- 
times claimed to be the natural son of Shakspeare, who was intimate 
with his father and mother. An ardent Loyalist, he was imprisoned at 
the beginning of the civil war, but escaped to France. He is best 
known by his heroic poem Gondibert, founded upon the reign of King 
Aribert of Lombardy, in the seventh century. The French taste which 
he brought back from his exile, is shown in his own dramas, and in his 
efforts to restore the theatre at the Restoration. His best plays are the 
Cruel Brother and 77;,? Law against Lovers. He was knighted by 
Charles I., and succeeded Ben Jonson as poet laureate. On his mon- 
ument in Westminster Abbey are these words : " O rare Sir William 
Davenant." 

Charles Cotton, 1 630-1 687 : he was a wit and a poet, and is best known 
as the friend of Izaak Walton. He made an addition to Walton's Com- 
plete Angler, which is found in all the later editions. The companion 
of Walton in his fishing excursions on the river Dove, Cotton addressed 
many of his poems to his "Adopted Father." He made travesties 
upon Virgil and Lucian, which are characterized by great licentious- 
ness; and wrote a gossiping and humorous Vovage to Lreland. 

Henry Vaughan, 1614-1695 : he was called the Silurist, from his residence 
in Wales, the country of the Silures. He is favorably known by the 
Silex Scintillans, or, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. With a 
rigid religious tone, he has all the attempt at rhetorical effect which 
mark the metaphysical school, but his language is harsher and more 
rugged. He has more heart than most of his colleagues, and extracts 
of great terseness and beauty are still made from his poems. He re- 
proves the corruptions of the age, and while acknowledging an indebt- 
edness, he gives us a clue to his inspiration : " The first, that with any 
effectual success attempted a diversion of this foul and overflowing 
stream, was that blessed man, V,x. George Herbert, whose holy life and 
verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least," 

The Earl of Clarendon, 1608-1674: Edward Hyde, afterward the Earl 
of Clarendon, played a conspicuous part in the history of England dur- 
ing his life, and also wrote a history of that period, which, although in 
the interests of the king's party, is an invaluable key to a knowledge of 
English life during the rebellion and just after the Restoration. A 



206 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

member of parliament in 1640. he rose rapidly in favor with the king, 
and was knighted in 1643. He left England in charge of the Prince 
of Wales in 1646, and at once began his History of the Great Rebel- 
lion, which was to occupy him for many years before its completion. 
After the death of Charles I,, he was the companion of his son's exile, 
and often without means for himself and his royal master, he was chan- 
cellor of the exchequer. At the Restoi^ation in 1660, vSir Edward 
Hyde was created Earl of Clarendon, and entered upon the real duties 
of his office. He retained his place for seven years, but became disagree- 
able to Charles as a troublesome monitor, and at the same time incurred 
the hatred of the people. In 1667 he was accused of high treason, 
and made his escape to France. Neglected by his master, ignored by 
the French monarch, he wandered about in France, from time to time 
petitioning his king to permit him to return and die in England, but 
without success. Seven years of exile, which he reminded the king 
" was a time prescribed and limited by God himself for the expiation 
of some of his greatest judgments," passed by, and the ex-chancellor 
died at Rouen. He had begun his histoiy in exile as the faithful ser- 
vant of a dethroned prince ; he ended it in exile, as the cast-ofF servant 
of an ungrateful monarch. As a writer of contemporary history, Clar- 
endon has given us the form and color of the time. The book is in 
title and handling a Royalist history. Its faults are manifest: first those 
of partisanship ; and secondly, those which spring from his absence, so 
that much of the work was written without an observant knowledge. 
His delineation of character is wonderful: the men of the times are 
more pictorially displayed than in the portraits of Van Dyk. The style 
is som^ewhat too pompous, being more that of the orator than of the 
historian, and containing long and parenthetic periods. Sir Walter 
Scott says : " His characters may match those of the ancient historians, 
and one thinks he would know the very men if he were to meet them 
in society." Macaulay concedes to him a strong sense of moral and 
religious obligation, a sincere reverence for the laws of his country, and 
a conscientious regard for the honor and interests of the crown; but 
adds that " his temper was sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposi- 
tion." No one can rightly understand the great rebellion without 
reading Clarendon's history of it. 



i 



CHAPTER XXL 

DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS. 



The Court of Charles II. 
Dryden's Early Life. 
The Death of Cromwell. 
The E.estoration. 



Dryden's Tribute. 
Annus Mirabilis. 
Absalom and Achitophel. 



The Death of Charles. 
Dryden's Conversion. 
Drj'den's Fall. 
His Odes. ■ 



The Court of Charles IL 

THE antithetic literature which .takes its coloring from 
the great rebellion, was now to give place to new 
forms not immediately connected with it, but incident to the 
Restoration. Puritanism was now to be oppressed, and the 
country was to be governed, under a show of constitutional 
right, more arbitrarily than ever before. The moral rebound, 
too, was tremendous ; the debaucheries of the cavaliers of 
Charles I. were as nothing in comparison with the lewdness 
and filth of the court of Charles H. To say that he brought 
in French fashions and customs, is to do injustice to the 
French : there never was a viler court in Europe than his 
own. It is but in accordance with our historical theory that 
the literature should partake of and represent the new condi- 
tion of things ; and the most remarkable illustrations of this 
are to be found in the works of Dry den. 

It may indeed with truth be said that we have now 
reached the most absolute of the literary types of English 
history. There was no great event, political or social, which 
is not mirrored in his poems ; no sentiment or caprice of the 
age which does not there find expression ; no kingly whim 
which he did not prostitute his great powers to gratify ; no 

207 



208 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

change of creed, political or religious, of which he was- not 
the recorder — few indeed, where royal favor was concerned, 
to which he was not the convert. To review the life of 
Dryden himself, is therefore to enter into the chronicle and 
philosophy of the times in which he lived. With this view, 
we shall dwell at some length upon his character and works. 

Early Life. — Dryden was born on the loth of August, 
1 631, and died on the ist of May, 1700. He lived, there- 
fore, during the reign of Charles I., the interregnum of 
Parliament, the protectorate of Cromwell, the restoration and 
reign of Charles II., and the reign of James II. ', he saw and 
suffered from the accession of William and Mary — a won- 
derful and varied volume in English history. And of all 
these Dryden was, more than any other man, the literary 
type. He was of a good family, and was educated at West- 
minster and Cambridge, where he gave early proofs of his 
literary talents. 

His father, a zealous Presbyterian, had reared his children 
in his own tenets ; we are not therefore astonished to find 
that his earliest poetical efforts are in accordance with the 
political conditions of the day. He settled in London, 
under the protection of his kinsman, Sir Gilbert Pickering, 
who was afterward one of the king's judges in 1649, and one 
of the council of eight who controlled the kingdom after 
Charles lost his head. As secretary to Sir Gilbert, young 
Dryden learned to scan the political horizon, and to aspire to 
preferment. 

Cromwell's Death, and Dryden's Monody. — But those 
who had depended upon Cromwell, forgot that he was not 
England, and that his breath was in his nostrils. The time 
of his departure was at hand. He had been offered the 
crown (April 9, 1656,) by a subservient parliament, and 
wanted it j but his friends and family opposed his taking it ; 



DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS. 2O9 

and the officers of the army, influenced by Pride, sent such a 
petition against it, tliat he felt obliged to refuse it. After 
months of mental anxiety and nervous torture — fearing assas- 
sination, keeping arms under his pillovv', never sleeping above 
three nights together in the same chamber, disappointed that 
even after all his achievements, and with all his cunning 
efforts, he had been unable to put on the crown, and to be 
numbered among the English sovereigns — Cromwell died in 
1658, leaving his title as Lord Protector to his son Richard, 
a weak and indolent man, who, after seven months' rule, fled 
the kingdom at the Restoration, to return after a generation 
had passed away, a very old man, to die in his native land. 
The people of Hertfordshire knew Richard Cromv\-ell. as the 
excellent and benevolent Mr. Clarke. 

Very soon after the death of Oliver Cromwell, Dryden, 
not yet foreseeing the Restoration, presented his tribute to the 
Commonwealth, in the shape of "'Heroic Stanzas on the 
Death of Oliver Cromwell; written after his funeral." A 
few stanzas will show his political principles, and are in 
strange contrast with what was soon to follow : 

How shall I then begin, or where conclude, 

To draw a fame so truly circular ? 
For, in a round, what order can be showed, 

Where all the parts so equal perfect are ? 

He made us freenien of the continent, 

Whom nature did like captives treat before; 

To nobler preys the English lion sent, 

And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar. 

His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest; 

His name a great example stands, to show 
How strangely high endeavors may be blest. 

Where piety and valor jointly go. 

The Restoration. — Cromwell died in September: early 
in the next year these stanzas were written. One year later 
18* o 



2IO ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

was the witness of a great event, which stirred England to 
its very depths, because it gave vent to sentiments for some 
time past cherished but concealed. The Long Parliament was 
dissolved on the loth of March, 1660. The new parliament 
meets April 25th ; it is almost entirely of Royalist opinions ; 
it receives Sir John Granville, the king's messenger, with 
loud acclamations ; the old lords come forth once more in 
velvet, ermine, and lawn. It is proclaimed that General 
Monk, the representative of the army, soon to be Duke of 
Albemarle, has gone from St. Albans to Dover, 

To welcome home again discarded faith. 

The Strong are as tow, and the maker as a spark. From the 
house of every citizen, lately vocal with the praises of the 
Protector, issues a subject ready to welcome his king with the 
most enthusiastic loyalty. 

Royal proclamations follow each other in rapid succession: 
at length the eventful day has come — the 29th of May, 1660. 
All the bells of London are ringing their merriest chimes; the 
streets are thronged with citizens in holiday attire ; the guilds 
of work and trade are out in their uniforms ; the army, late 
the organ of Cromwell, is drawn up on Black Heath, and is 
cracking its myriad throat with cheers. In the words of 
Master Roger Wildrake, "There were bonfires flaming, music 
playing, rumps roasting, healths drinking ; London in a blaze 
of light from the Strand to Rotherhithe." At length the 
sound of herald trumpets is heard ; the king is coming ; a cry 
bursts forth which the London echoes have almost forgotten: 
" God save the king ! The king enjoys his own again ! " 

It seems to the dispassionate reader almost incredible that 
the English people, who shed his father's blood, who rallied 
round the Parliament, and were fulsome in their praises of the 
Protector, should thus suddenly change ; but, allowing for 
*'the madness of .the people," we look for strength and con- 
sistency to the men of learning and letters. We feel sure 



DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS. 211 

that he who sang his eulogy of Cromwell dead, can have now 
no lyric burst for the returning Stuart. We are disappointed. 

Dryden's Tribute. — The first poetic garland thrown at 
the feet of the restored king was Dryden's Astrcea Redux, 
a poem on The happy restoration of his sacred majesty 
Charies 11. To give it classic force, he quotes from the 
PoUio as a text, 

Jam redit et virgo, redeunt saturnia regna ; 

thus hailing the saturnian times of James I. and Charles I. 
A few lines of the poem complete the curious contrast : 

While our cross stars deny us Charles his bed, 
"Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed, 
For his long absence church and state did groan ; 
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne. 



How great were then our Charles his woes, who thus 
Was forced to suffer for himself and us. 

Oh happy prince whom Heaven hath taught the way, 
By paying vows to have more vows to pay : 
Oh happy age ! oh, times like those alone 
By Fate reserved for great Augustus' throne. 
When the joint growth of arts and arms foreshow 
The world a monarch, and that monarch you ! 

The contrast assumes a clearer significance, if we remember 
that the real time which elapsed between the publications of 
these two poems was less than two years. 

This is greatly to Dryden's shame, as it is to Waller's, who 
did the same thing ; but it must be clearly pointed out that 
in this the poets were really a type of all England, for whose 
■suffrages they wrote thus. From this time the career of 
Dry den was intimately associated with that of the restored 
king. He wrote an ode for the coronation in 1661, and a 
poetical tribute to Clarendon, the Lord High Chancellor, the 
king's better self. 



212 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

To Dryden, as a writer of plays, we shall recur in a later 
chapter, when the other dramatists of the age will be con- 
sidered. 

A concurrence of unusual events in 1665, brought forth 
the next year the "Annus Mirabilis," or Wonderful Yeai', 
in which these events are recorded with the minuteness of a 
chronicle. This is indeed its chief value; for, praised as it 
was at the time, it does not so well bear the analysis of 
modern criticism. 

Annus Mirabilis. — It describes the great naval battle with 
the Dutch; the fire of London; and the ravages of the plague. 
The detail with which these are described, and the frequent 
felicity of expression, are the chief charm of the poem. In 
the refreshingly simple diary of Pepy's, we find this jotting 
under date of 3d February, 1666-7: " A?i?tus Mirabilis. I 
am very well pleased this night with reading a poem I brought 
home with me last night from Westminster Hall, of Dryden' s, 
upon the present war: a very good poem." 

Dryden' s subserviency, aided by the power of his pen, 
gained its reward. In 1668, on the death of Sir William 
Davenant, he was appointed Laureate, and historiographer 
to the king, with an annual salary of ^^200. He soon 
became the most famous literary man in England. Milton, 
the Puritan, was producing his wonderful visions in darkened 
retirement, while at court, or in the seat of honor on the 
stage, or in his sacred chair at Will's Coffee-house in Covent 
Garden (near the fire-place in winter, and carried into the 
balcony in summer), "Glorious John" was the observed 
of all observers. Of Will's Coffee-house, Congreve says, in 
Love for Love, "Oh, confound that Will's Coffee-house ; it- 
has ruined more young men than the Royal Oak Lottery : " 
this speaks at once of the fashion and social license of the 
time. 

Charles II. v/as happy to have so fluent a pen, to lampoon 



DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS. 2I3 

or satirize his enemies, or to make indecent comedies for his 
amusement j while Dryden's aim seems to have been scarcely 
higher than preferment at court and honored contemporary 
notoriety for his genius. But if the great majority lauded 
and flattered him, he was not without his share in those 
quarrels of authors, which were carried on at that day not only 
with goose-quills, but with swords and bludgeons. It is re- 
corded that he was once waylaid by the hired ruffians of the 
Earl of Rochester, and beaten almost to death : these broils 
generally had a political as well as a social significance. In 
his quarrels with the literary men, he used the shafts of satire. 
His contest with Thomas Shadwell has been preserved in his 
satire called ^^IcFlecknoe. Flecknoe was an Irish priest v/ho 
wrote dull plays; and in this poem Dryden proposes Shadwell 
as his successor on the throne of dulness. It was the model 
or suggester of Pope's Dunciad ; but the model is by no 
means equal to the copy. 



Absalom and Achitophel. — Nothing which he had 
yet written is so true an index to the political history as his 
"Absalom and Achitophel," which he published in 16S1. 
The history may be given in few words. Charles II. had a 
natural son by an obscure Vv-oman named Lucy Walters. 
This boy had been created Duke of ]\Ionmouth. He was 
put forward by the designing Earl of Shaftesbury as the head 
of a faction, and as a rival to the Duke of York. To ruin the 
Duke was their first object; and this they attempted by in- 
flaming the people against his religion, which was Roman 
Catholic. If they could thus have him and his heirs put out of 
the succession to the throne, ]Mon mouth might be named heir 
apparent ; and Shaftesbury hoped to be the power behind the 
throne. 

]Monmouth was weak, handsome, and vain, and was in truth 
a puppet in wicked hands ; he was engaged in the Rye- 
house plot, and schemed not only against his uncle, but 



214 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

against the person of his father himself. To satirize and ex- 
pose these plots and plotters, Dryden (at the instance of the 
king, it is said,) wrote Absalom and Achiiophel, in which are 
introduced, under Scripture names, many of the principal 
political characters of the day, from the king down to Titus 
Gates. The number of the names is 6i. Charles is, of course, 
David, and Monmouth, the wayward son, is Absalom. 
Shaftesbury is Achitophel, and Dr. Gates figures as Corah. 
The Ethnic plot is the popish plot, and Gath is that land of 
exile where Charles so long resided. Strong in his praise of 
David, the poet is discreet and delicate in his handling of 
Absalom; his instinct is as acute as that of Falstaff : " Beware ! 
instinct, the lion will not touch a true prince," or touch him 
so gently that the lion at least will not suffer. Thus, Mon- 
mouth is represented as 

Half loath, and half consenting to the ill, 
For royal blood within him struggled still; 
He thus replied : " And what pretence have I 
To take up arms for public liberty ? 
My father governs with unquestioned right, 
The faith's defender and mankind's delight; 
Good, gracious, just, observant of the laws, 
And heaven by wonders has espoused his cause." 

But he may, and does, roundly rate Achitophel, who tempts 
with Satanic seductions, and proves to the youth, from the 
Bible, his right to the succession, peaceably or forcibly ob- 
tained. Among those who conspired with Monmouth were 
honest hearts seeking for the welfare of the realm. Chief of 
these were Lord Russel and Sidney, of whom the latter was 
in favor of a commonwealth ; and the former, only sought 
the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Duke of York, and the 
redress of grievances, but not the assassination or deposition 
of the king. Both fell on the scaffold ; but they have both 
been considered martyrs in the cause of civil liberty. 

And here we must pause to say that in the literary structure, 



DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS. 215 

language, and rhythm of the poem, Dryden had made a great 
step toward that mastery of the rhymed pentameter couplet, 
which is one of his greatest claims to distinction. 

Death of Charles. — At length, in 1685, Charles II., 
after a sudden and short illness, was gathered to his fathers. 
His life had been such that England could not mourn : he 
had prostituted female honor, and almost destroyed political 
virtue ; sold English territory and influence to France for 
beautiful strumpets; and at the last had been received, on his 
death-bed, into the Roman Catholic Church, while nominally 
the supreme head of the Anglican communion. England 
cannot mourn, but Dryden tortures^ language into crocodile 
tears in his Tlwenodia Augustalis, sacred to the happy meniory 
of King Charles II. A few lines will exhibit at once the false 
statements and the absolute want of a spark of sorrow — • 
dead, inanimate words, words, words ! 

Thus long my gi'ief has kept me drunk : 
Sure there 's a lethargy in mighty' woe; 
Tears stand congealed, and cannot flow. 

Tears for a stroke foreseen, afford relief; 

But unprovided for a sudden blow, 

Like Niobe, we marble grow, 
And petrify with grief! 

Dryden's Conversion. — The Duke of York succeeded 
as James II. : he was an open and bigoted Roman Catholic, 
who at once blazoned forth the death-bed conversion of his 
brother \ and who from the first only limited his hopes to the 
complete restoration of the realm to popery. Dryden's 
course was at once taken ; but his instinct was at fault, as but 
three short years were to show. He gave in his adhesion to 
the new king's creed ; he who had been Puritan with the 
commonwealth, and churchman with the Restoration, became 
Roman Catholic with the accession of a popish king. He 



2l6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

bad written the Religio Laid to defend the tenets of the 
Church of England against the attacks of papists and dis- 
senters; and he now, to leave the world in no doubt as to his 
reasons and his honesty, published a poem entitled the Hind 
and Panther, which might in his earlier phraseology have 
been justly styled "The Christian experience of pious John 
Dryden." It seems a shameless act, but it is one exponent 
of the loyalty of that day. There are some critics who 
believe him to have been sincere, and who insist that such a 
man "is not to be sullied by suspicion that rests on what 
after all might prove a fortuitous coincidence." But such 
frequent changes with the government — with a reward for 
each change — tax too far even that charity which " thinketh 
no evil." Dryden' s pen was eagerly welcomed by the 
Roman Catholics. He began to write at once in their 
interest, and thus to further his own. Dr. Johnson says : 
" That conversion will always be suspected which apparently 
concerns with interest. He that never finds his error till it 
hinders his progress toward wealth or honor, will not be 
thought to love truth only for herself." 

In this long poem of 2,000 lines, we have the arguments 
which conducted the poet to this change. The different 
beasts represent the different churches and sects. The Church 
of Rome is thus represented : 

A milk-wliite hind, immortal and unchanged, 
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged; 
Without unspotted, innocent within, 
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin. 

The other beasts were united to destroy her ; but she could 
"venture to drink with them at the common watering-place 
under the protection of her friend the kingly lion." 

The Panther is the Church of England : 

The Panther, sure the noblest, next the hind. 
And fairest creature of the spotted kind; 



DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS. 21/ 

Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away, 
She v/ere too good to be a beast of prey I 

Then he introduces — 

TliQ B/oody Bear^ d.Xi Iiuiependeiit beast; the Quaking Hare y 
for the Quakers ; the Bristled Baptist Boar. 

In this fable, quite in the style of ^sop, we find the Dame, 
i.e,, the Hind, entering into the subtle points of theology, 
and trying to prove her position. The poem, as might be 
supposed, was well received, and perhaps converted a few to 
the monarch's faith ; for who were able yet to foresee that 
the monarch would so abuse his power, as to be driven away 
from his throne amid the execrations of his subjects. 

The harmony of Dryden and the power of James could 

control progressive England no longer. Like one man, the 

nation rose and uttered a mighty cry to William of Orange. 

James, trembling, flies hither and thither, and at length, fearing 

the fate of his father, he deserts his throne ; the commons 

call this desertion abdication, and they give the throne to his 

nephew William and his daughter Mary. Such was the end 

of the restored Stuarts ; and we can have no regret that it is : 

'whatever sympathy we may have had with the sufferings of 

ICharles I., — and the English nation shared it, as is proved by 

he restoration of his son, — we can have none with his suc- 

essors : they threw away their chances ; they dissipated the 

lost enthusiastic loyalty; they squandered opportunities; and 

id no enemies, even the bitterest, who were more fatal than 

emselves. And now it was manifest that Dryden' s day 

s over. Nor does he shrink from his fate. He neither 
sings a Godspeeding ode to the runaway king, nor a salutatory 
to the new comers. 

Dryden's Fall. —Stripped of his laureate-wreath and all 

his emoluments, he does not sit down to fold his hands and 

repine. Sixty years of age, he girds up his loins to work 

manfully for his living. He translates from the classics ; he 

19 



2l8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

renders Chaucer into modern English: in 1690 he produced 
a play entitled Don Sebastian, which has been considered his 
dramatic master-piece, and, as if to inform the world that age 
had not dimmed the fire of his genius, he takes as his caption, — • 

nee tarda senectus 

Debilitat vires animi, mutat que vigorem. 

This latter part of his life claims a true sympathy, because 
he is every inch a man.'' 

It must not be forgotten that Dryden presented Chaucer to 
England anew, after centuries of neglect, almost oblivion; 
for which the world owes him a debt of gratitude. This he 
did by modernizing several of the Canterbury Tales, and thus 
leading English scholars to seek the beauties and instructions 
of the original. The versions themselves are by no means 
well executed, it must be said. He has lost the musical words 
and fresh diction of the original, as a single comparison 
between the two will clearly show. Perhaps there is no finer 
description of morning than is contained in these lines of 
Chaucer : 

The besy lark, the messager of day, 
Saleweth m hir song the morwe gray ; 
And firy Phebus riseth up so bright 
That all the orient laugheth of the sight. 

How expressive the words : the busy lark ; the sun rising 
like a strong man ; all the oj'ient laughing. The following 
version by Dryden, loses at once the freshness of idea and 
the felicity of phrase : 

The morning lark, the messenger of day, 

Saluted in her song the morning gray ; 

And soon the sun arose with beams so bright 

That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight. 

The student will find this only one of many illustrations of 



DRYDEN, AND THE REFORMED STUARTS. 2ig 

the manner in which Dryden has belittled Chaucer in his 
versions. 

Odes. — Dryden has been regarded as the first who used 
the heroic couplet with entire mastery. In his hands it is 
bold and sometimes rugged, but always powerful and handled 
with great ease : he fashioned it for Pope to polish. Of this, 
his larger poems are full of proof. But there is another 
verse, of irregular rhythm, in which he was even more suc- 
cessful, — lyric poetry as found in the irregular ode, varying 
from the short line to the ''Alexandrine dragging its slow 
length along ; " the staccato of a harp ending in a lengthened 
flow of m.elody. 

Thus long ago, 

Ere heaving billows learned to blow, 

While organs yet were mute ; 

Tiniotheus to his breathing flute 

And sounding lyre 

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. 

When he became a Roman Catholic, St. Cecilia, ''in- 
ventress of the vocal frame, ' ' became his chief devotion ; and 
the Song on St, Cecilia' s Day and An Ode to St. Cecilia, are 
the principal illustrations of this new power. 

Gray, who was remarkable for his own lyric power, told 
Dr. Beattie that if there were any excellence in his own 
numbers, he had learned it wholly from Dryden. 

The Ode on St. Cecilia^ s Day, also entitled ^'■Alexander' s 
Feast, ^^ in which he portrays the power of music in inspiring 
that famous monarch to love, pity, and war, has to the scholar 
the perfect excellence of the best Greek lyric. It ends with 
a tribute to St. Cecilia. 

At last divine Cecilia came, 
Inventress of the vocal frame : 
Now let Timotheus yield the prize, 
Or both divide the crown. 



220 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

He raised a mortal to the skies ; 
She drew an angel down. 

Dryden's prose, principally in the form of prefaces and 
dedications, has been admired by all critics ; and one of the 
greatest has said, that if he had turned his attention entirely 
in that direction, he would have been facile princeps among 
the prose writers of his day. He has, in general terms, the 
merit of being the greatest refiner of the English language, 
and of having given system and strength to English poetry 
above any v/riter up to his day ; but more than all, his works 
are a transcript of English history — political, religious, and 
social — as valuable as those of any professed historian. 
Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of an 
earl, who, it is said, was not a congenial companion, and who 
afterwards became insane. He died from a gangrene in the 
foot. He declared that he died in the profession of the 
Roman Catholic faith; which raises a new doubt as to his 
sincerity in the change. Near the monmiient of old father 
Chaucer, in Westminster, is one erected, by the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, to Dryden. It merely bears name and date, as his 
life and works were supposed to need no eulogy. 



CHAPTER XXIL 

THE RELIGIOUS LITERATURE OF THE GREAT REBELLION 
AND OF THE RESTORATION. 



The English Divines. 


Fuller. 


Bunyan. 


Hall. 


Sir T. Browne. 


South. 


Chillingworth. 


Baxter. 


Other Writers 


Taylor. 


Fox. 





The English Divines. 

HAVING come down, in the course of English Litera- 
ture, to the reign of William and Mary, we must look 
back for a brief space to consider the religious polemics 
which grew out of the national troubles and vicissitudes. We 
shall endeavor to classify the principal authors under this 
head from the days of Milton to the time when the Protestant 
succession was established on the English throne. 

The Established Church had its learned doctors before the 
civil war, many of whom contributed to the literature ; but 
when the contest between king and parliament became immi- 
nent, and during the progress of the quarrel, these became 
controversialists^ — most of them on the side of the unfortu- 
nate but misguided monarch, — and suffered with his declining 
fortunes. 

To go over the whole range of theological literature in this 
extended period, would be to study the history of the times 
from a theological point of view. Our space will only permit 
a brief notice of the principal writers. 

Hall. — First arnong these was Joseph Hall, vyho was born 
in 1574. He was educated at Cambridge, and was appointed 

I^* 221 



222 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

to the See of Exeter in 1624, and transferred to that of Nor- 
wich in 1 641, the year before Charles I. ascended the throne. 
The scope of his writings was quite extensive. As a theo- 
logical writer, he is known by his numerous sermons, his Epis- 
copacy by Divine Right Asserted, his Clwistian Meditations, 
and various commentaries and Contemplations upon the Scrip- 
tures. He was also a poet and a satirist, and excelled in this 
iield. His Satires — Virgidemiarium — were published at the 
early age of twenty-three ; but they are highly praised by the 
critics, v/ho rank him also, for eloquence and learning, with 
Jeremy Taylor. He suffered for his attachment to the king's 
cause, was driven from his see, and spent the last portion of 
his life in retirement and poverty. He died in 1656. 

Chillingworth. — The next in chronological order is 
William Chillingworth, who was born in 1602, and is prin- 
cipally known as the champion of Protestantism against 
Rome and Roman innovations. While a student at Oxford, 
he had been won over to the Roman Catholic Church by 
John Perse, a famous Jesuit ; and he went at once to pursue 
his studies in the Jesuit college at Douay. He was so notable 
for his acuteness and industry, that every effort was made to 
bring him back. Archbishop Laud, his god-father, was able 
to convince him of his errors, and in tv/o months he returned 
to England. A short time after this he left the Roman Cath- 
olics, and became tenfold more a Protestant than before. 
He entered into controversies with his former friends the 
Jesuits, and in answer to one of their treatises entitled, Mercy 
and Truth, or Cliarity maintained by the Komaii Catholics, he 
wrote his most famous work, The Religio?i of Protestants a 
Safe Way to Salvation. Chillingworth was a warm adherent 
of Charles I.; and was captured by the parliamentary forces 
in 1643. He died the next year. His double change of faith 
gave him the full range of the controversial field ; and, in addi- 
tion to this knowledge, the clearness of his language and the 



LITERATURE OF THE GREAT REBELLION. 223 

perspicuity of his logic gave great effect to his writings. Til- 
lotsoii calls him '^ the glory of this age and nation." 

Taylor. — One of the greatest names in the annals of the 
English Church and of English literature is that of Jeremy 
Taylor. He was the son of a barber, and was born at Cam- 
bridge in 1613. A remarkably clever youth, he was educated 
at Cambridge, and soon owed his preferment to his talents, 
eloquence, and learning. An adherent of the king, he was 
appointed chaplain in the royal army, and was several times 
imprisoned. When the king's cause went down, and during 
the protectorate of Cromwell, he retired to Wales, where he 
kept a school, and was also chaplain to the Earl of Carberry. 
The vicissitudes of fortune compelled him to leave for a while 
this retreat, and he became a teacher in Ireland. The restora- 
tion of Charles II. gave him rest and preferment : he was 
made Bishop of Down and Connor. Taylor is now princi- 
pally known for his learned, quaint, and eloquent discourses, 
which are still read. A man of liberal feelings and opinions, 
he wrote on "The liberty of prophesying, showing the un- 
reasonableness of prescribing to other men's faith, and the 
iniquity of persecuting different opinions: " the title itself 
being a very liberal discourse. He upholds the Ritual in An 
Apology for fixed and set Forms of Worship. In this he con- 
siders the divine precepts to be contained within narrow 
limits, and that beyond this everything is a matter of dispute, 
so that we cannot unconditionally condemn the opinions of 
others. 

His Great Exemplar of Sanctity and Holy Life, his Rule 
and Exercises of Holy Living and of Holy Dyiiig, and his 
Golden Grove, are devotional works, well known to modern 
Christians of all denominations. He has been praised alike 
by Roman Catholic divines and many Protestant Christians 
not of the Anglican Church. There is in all his writings a 
splendor of imagery, combined with harmony of style, and 



224 ENGLISH LITERATURE.. 

wonderful variety, readiness, and accuracy of scholarship. 
His quotations from the whole range of classic authors would 
furnish the Greek and Latin armory of any modern writer. 
What Shakspeare is in the Drama, Spenser in the Allegory, 
and Milton in the religious Epic, Taylor may claim to be in 
the field of purely religious literature. He died at Lisburn, 
in 1667. 

Fuller. — More quaint and eccentric than the writers just 
mentioned, but a rare representative of his age, stands Thomas 
Fuller. He was born in 1608 ; at the early age of twelve, he 
entered Cambridge, and, after completing his education, took 
orders. In 1631, he was appointed prebendary of Salisbury. 
Thence he removed to London in 1641, when the civil war 
was about to open. When the king left London, in 1642, 
Fuller preached a sermon in his favor, to the great indigna- 
tion. of the opposite party. Soon after, he was appointed to 
a chaplaincy in the royal army, and not only preached to the 
soldiers, but urged them forward in battle. In 1646 he 
returned to London, where he was permitted to preach, under 
surveillance, however. He seems to have succeeded in 
keeping out of trouble until the Restoration, when he was 
restored to his prebend. He did not enjoy it long, .as he 
died in the next year, 1661. His writings are very numerous, 
and some of them are still read. Among these are Good 
Thoughts in Bad Times ^ Good Thoughts in Worse Times, and 
Mixt Contemplations iit Better Times. The bad and worse 
times mark the progress of the civil war : the better times he 
finds in the Restoration. 

One of his most valuable v/orks is The Church History of 
Britain, from the birtJi of Christ to 1648, in 11 books. Criti- 
cized as it has been for its puns and quibbles and its occa- 
sional caricatures, it contains rare descriptions and very vivid 
stories of the important ecclesiastical eras in England. 

Another book containing important information is his 



LITERATURE OF THE GREAT REBELLION. 225 

History of the Worthies of England, a posthumous work, 
published by his son the year after his death. It contains 
accounts of eminent Enghshmen in different countries ; and 
while there are many errors which he would perhaps have 
corrected, it is full of odd and interesting information not to 
be found collated in any other book. 

Representing and chronicling the age as he does, he has 
perhaps more individuality than any writer of his time, and 
this gives a special interest to his works. 

Sir Thomas Browne. — Classed among theological writers, 
but not a clergyman, Sir Thomas Browne is noted for the 
peculiarity of his subjects, and his diction. He was born in 
1605, and was educated at Oxford. He studied medicine, 
and became a practising physician. He travelled on the con- 
tinent, and returning to England in 1633, he began to write 
his most important work, Religio Medici, at once a transcript 
of his own life and a manifesto of what the religion of a 
physician should be. It was kept in manuscript for some 
time, but was published without his knowledge in 1642. He 
then revised the work, and published several editions himself. 
No description of the treatise can give the reader a just idea 
of it; it requires perusal. The criticism of Dr. Johnson is 
terse and just : it is remarkable, he says, for ^' the novelty of 
paradoxes, the dignity of sentiment, the quick succession of 
images, the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtilty of 
disquisition, and the strength of language." As the portrait- 
ure of an inner life, it is admirable ; and the accusation of 
heterodoxy brought against him on account of a few careless 
passages is unjust. 

Among his other works are Essays on Vulgar Errors {Fseu- 
doxia Epidemical, and Hydriofaphica or Urne burial; the lat- 
ter suggested by the exhumation of some sepulchral remains 
in Norfolk, which led him to treat with great learning of the 
funeral rites of all nations. To this he afterwards added The 

P 



226 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincujixial Lozenge, in which, in 
the language of Coleridge, he finds quincunxes " in heaven 
above, in the earth below, in the mind of man, in tones, 
optic nerves, in the roots of trees, in leaves, in everything." 
He died in 1682. 

Numerous sects, all finding doctrine and forms in the Bible, 
were the issue of the religious and political controversies of 
the day. Without entering into a consideration or even an 
enumeration of these, we now mention a few of the principal 
names among them. 

Richard Baxter. — Among the most devout, indepandent, 
and popular of the religious writers of the day, Richard 
Baxter occupies a high rank. He was born in 161 5, and was 
ordained a clergyman in 1638. In the civil troubles he de- 
sired to remain neutral, and he opposed Cromwell when he 
was made Protector. In 1662 he left the Church, and was 
soon the subject of persecution : he was always the champion 
of toleration. In prison, poor, hunted about from place to 
place, he was a martyr in spirit. During his great earthly 
troubles he was solaced by. a vision, which he embodied in 
his popular work. The Saints' Everlasting Rest ; and he wrote 
with great fervor A Call to the Unconverted. He was a very 
voluminous writer; the brutal Judge Jeffries, before whom he 
appeared for trial, called him "an old knave, who had writ- 
ten books enough to load a cart." He wrote a paraphrase of 
the New Testament, and numerous discourses. Dr. Johnson 
advised Boswell, when speaking of Baxter's works : "Read 
any of them; they are all good." He continued preaching 
until the close of his life, and died peacefully in 1691. 

George Fox. — The founder of the Society of Friends was 
born in 1624, in an humble condition of life, and at an early 
age was apprenticed to a shoemaker and grazier. Uneducated 
and unknown, he considered himself as the subject of special 



LITERATURE OF THE GREAT REBELLION. 22/ 

religious providence, and at length as supernaturally called of 
God. Suddenly abandoning his servile occupation, he came 
out in 1647, at the age of twenty-three, as the founder of a 
new sect ; an itinerant preacher, he rebuked the multitudes 
which he assembled by his fervent words. Much of his suc- 
cess was due to his earnestness and self-abnegation. He 
preached in all parts of England, and visited the American 
colonies. The name Quaker is said to have been applied to 
this sect in 1650, when Fox, arraigned before Judge Bennet, 
told him to ''tremble at the word of the Lord." The estab- 
lishment of this sect by such a man is one of the strongest 
illustrations of the eager religious inquiry of the age. 

The works of Fox are a very N?^\xd\AQ Journal of his Life 
and Travels ; Letters and Testimonies ; Gospel Truth Demon- 
strated, — all of which form the best statement of the origin 
and tenets of his sect. Fox was a solemn, reverent, absorbed 
man ; a great reader and fluent expounder of the Scriptures, 
but fanatical and superstitious ; a believer in witchcraft, and 
in his power to detect witches. The sect which he founded, 
and which has played so respectable a part in later history, is 
far more important than the founder himself. He died in 
London in 1690. 

William Penn. — The fame of Fox in America has been 
eclipsed by that of his chief convert William Penn. In an 
historical or biographical work, the life of Penn would de- 
mand extended mention ; but his name is introduced here 
only as one of the theological writers of the day. He was 
born in 1644, and while a student at Oxford was converted to 
the Friends' doctrine by the preaching of Thomas Loe, a col- 
league of George Fox. The son of Admiral Sir William Penn, 
he was the ward of James H., and afterwards Lord Pro- 
prietary and founder of Pennsylvania. Persecuted for his 
tenets, he was frequently imprisoned for his preaching and 
writings. In 1668 he wrote Truth Exalted and The Sandy 



228 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Foundation, and when imprisoned for these, he wrote in jail 
his most famous work, No Cross, no Crown.. 

After the expulsion of James 11. , Penn was repeatedly tried 
and acquitted for alleged attempts to aid the king in recover- 
ing his throne. The malignity of Lord Macaulay has repro- 
duced the charges, but reversed, most unjustly, the acquittals. 
His record occupies a large space in American history, and 
he is reverenced for having established a great colony on 
the basis of brotherly love. Poor and infirm, he died in 
1718. 

Robert Barclay, who was born in 164S, is only mentioned 
in this connection on account of his Latin apology for the 
Quakers, written in 1676, and translated since into English. 

John Bunyan. — Among the curious religious outcroppings 
of the civil war, none is more striking and singular than John 
Bunyan. He produced a work of a decidedly polemical 
character, setting forth his peculiar doctrines, and — a re- 
markable feature in the course of English literature — a 
story so interesting and vivid that it has met with universal 
perusal and admiration. It is at the same time an allegory 
which has not its equal in the language. Rhetoricians must 
always mention the Pilgrim's Progress as the most splendid 
example of the allegory. 

Bunyan was born in Elston, Bedfordshire, in 1628. The 
son of a tinker, his childhood and early manhood were idle 
and vicious. A sudden and sharp rebuke from a woman not 
much better than himself, for his blasphemy, set him to think- 
ing, and he soon became a changed man. In 1653 he 
joined the Baptists, and soon, without preparation, began to 
preach. For this he was thrown into jail, where he remained 
for more than twelve years. It was during this period that, 
with no other books than the Bible and Fox's Book of Mar- 
tyrs, he excogitated his allegory. In 1672 he was released 



LITERATURE OF THE GREAT REBELLION. 229 

through the influence of Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. He im- 
mediately began to preach, and continued to do so until 1688, 
when he died from a fever brought on by exposure. 

In his first work, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 
he gives us his own experience, — fearful dreams of early child- 
hood, his sins and warnings in the parliamentary army, with 
divers temptations, falls, and struggles. 

Of his great work. The Pilgrim' s Progress, it is hardly ne- 
cessary to speak at length. The story of the Pilgrim, Christian, 
is known to all English readers, large and little ; how he left 
the City of Destruction, and journeyed towards the Celestial 
City ; of his thrilling adventures ; of the men and things that 
retarded his progress, and of those who helped him forward. 
No one has ever discoursed with such vivid description and 
touching pathos of the Land of Beulah, the Delectable 
Mountains, the Christian's inward rapture at the glimpse of the 
Celestial City, and his faith-sustaining descent into the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death ! As a work of art, it is inimitable ; 
as a book of religious instruction, it is more to be admired for 
sentiment than for logic ; its influence upon children is rather 
that of a high-wrought romance than of godly precept. It is 
a curious reproduction, with a slight difl'erence in cast, of the 
morality play of an earlier time. Mercy, Piety, Christian, 
Hopeful, Greatheart, Faithful, are representatives of Christian 
graces ; and, as in the morality, the Prince of Darkness figures 
as Apollyon. 

Bunyan also wrote The Holy War, an allegory, which 
describes the contest between Immanuel and Diabolus for the 
conquest of the city of Mansoul. This does not by any means 
share the popularity of Tiic Pilgrim'' s Progress. The lan- 
guage of all his works is common and idiomatic, but precise 
and strong : it is the vigorous English of an unpretending 
man, without the graces of the schools, but expressing his 
meaning with remarkable clearness. Like Milton's Paradise 
Lost, Bunyan's allegory has been improperly placed by many 



230 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

persons on a par with the Bible as a body of Christian doc- 
trine, and for instruction in righteousness. 

Robert South. — This eccentric clergyman was born in 
1633. While king's scholar at Dr. Busby's school in London, 
he led the devotions on the day of King Charles' execution, 
and prayed for his majesty by name. At first a Puritan, he 
became a churchman, and took orders. He was learned and 
eloquent ; but his sermons, which were greatly admired at the 
time, contain many oddities, forced conceits, and singular 
anti-climaxes, which gained for him the appellation of the 
witty churchman. 

He is accused of having been too subservient to Charles 
n.; and he also is considered as displaying not a little vindic- 
tiveness in his attacks on his former colleagues the Puritans. 
He is only known to this age by his sermons, which are still 
published and read. 

Other Theological Writers. 

Isaac Barrow, 1630-1677 : a man of varied learning, a traveller in the 
East, and an oriental scholar. He was appointed Professor of Greek 
at Cambridge, and also lectured on Mathematics. He was a profound 
thinker and a weighty writer, principally known by his courses of ser- 
mons on the Decalogue, the Creed, and the Sacraments. 

Eihvard Stillingfieet, 1 635-1 699 : a clergyman of the Church of England, 
he was appointed Bishop of Worcester. Many of his sermons have 
been published. Among his treatises is one entitled, Irenicum, a 
Weapon- Salve for the Church'' s Wounds, or the Divine Right of Par- 
ticular Forms of Church Government Discussed and Examined. " The 
argument," says Bishop Burnet, " was managed with so much learning 
and skill that none of either side ever undertook to answer it." He also 
wrote Origines Sacrce, or a Rational Account of the Christian Faith, 
and various treatises in favor of Protestantism and against the Church 
of Rome. 
William Sherlock, 1678-1761 : he was Dean of St. Paul's, and a writer 
of numerous doctrinal discourses, among which are those on The 
Trinity, and on Death and the Future Judgment. His son, Thomas 



LITERATURE OF THE GREAT REBELLION. 23I 

Sherlock, D.D., boi-n 1678, was also a distinguished theological 
writer. 

Gilbert Burnet, 1643— 1715 • ^^ was very much of a politician, and played 
a prominent part in the Revolution, He was made Bishop of Salisbury 
in 1689. He is principally known by his History of the Reformation, 
written in the Protestant interest, and by his greater work, the History of 
viy Own Times. Not without a decided bias, this latter work is spe- 
cially valuable as the narration of an eye-witness. The history has been 
variously criticized for prejudice and inaccuracy ; but it fills what would 
otherwise have been a great vacuum in English historical literature. 

John Locke, 1 632-1 704. In a history of philosophy, the name of this 
distinguished philosopher would occupy a prominent place, and his 
works would require extended notice. But it is not amiss to introduce 
him briefly in this connection, because his works all have an ethical sig- 
nificance. He was educated as a physician, and occupied several 
official positions, in which he suffered from the vicissitudes of political 
fortune, being once obliged to retreat from persecution to Holland. His 
Letters on Toleration is a noble effort to secure the freedom of con- 
science : his Treatises on Civil Governf?tent were specially designed to 
refute Sir John Filmer's Patriarcha, and to overthrow the principle of 
the yus Divinum. His greatest work is an Essay on the Human Un- 
derstanding. This marks an era in English thought, and has done 
much to invite attention to the subject of intellectual philosophy. He 
derives our ideas from the tv/o sources, sensation and reflection ; and 
although many of his views have been superseded by the investigations 
of later philosophers, it is due to him in some degree that their inqui- 
ries have been possible. 

Diarists and Antiquarians. 

John Evelyn, 1 620-1 705. Among the unintentional historians of Eng- 
land, none are of more value than those who have left detailed and 
gossiping diaries of the times in which they lived : among these Evelyn 
occupies a prominent place. He was a gentleman of education and 
position, who, after the study of law, travelled extensively, and resided 
several years in France. He had varied accomplishments. His Sylva 
is a discourse on forest trees and on the propagation of timber in his 
majesty's dominions. To this he afterwards added Pomona, or a trea- 
tise on fruit trees. He was also the author of an essay on A Parallel 
of the Ancient Architecture with the Modern. But the work by which 
he is now best known is his Diary ixovci 1641 to 1705; it is a necessary 



232 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

companion to the study of the history of that period ; and has been 
largely consulted by modern writers in making up the historic record 
of the time. 

Samuel Pepys, 1637-1703. This famous diarist was the son of a London 
tailor. He received a collegiate education, and became a connoisseur 
in literature and art. Of a prying disposition, he saw all that he could 
of the varied political, literaiy, and social life of England; and has 
recorded what he saw in a diary so quaint, simple, and amusing, that it 
has retained its popularity to the present day, and has greatly aided the 
historian both in facts and philosophy. He held an official position as 
secretary in the admiralty, the duties of which he discharged with great 
system and skill. In addition to this Diary, we have also his Corre- 
spondence, published after his death, which is historically of great im- 
portance. In both diary and correspondence he has the charm of great 
naivete, — as of a curious and gossiping observer, who never dreamed 
that his writings would be made public. Men and women of social 
station are painted in pre-Raphaelite style, and figure before us with 
great truth and vividness. 

Klias Ashniole, 161 7-1693, This antiquarian and virtuoso is principally 
known as the founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. He studied 
law, chemistry, and natural philosophy. Besides an edition of the 
manuscript works of certain English chemists, he wrote Bennevenmi, — 
the description of a Roman road mentioned in the Itinerary of Anto- 
ninus, — and a History of the Order of the Garter. His Diary was pub- 
lished nearly a century after his death, but is by no means equal in 
value to those of Evelyn and Pepys. 

John Aubrey, 1627-1697: a man of curious mind, Aubrey investigated 
the supernatural topics of the day, and presented them to the world in 
his Miscellanies. Among these subjects it is interesting to notice " blows 
invisible," and "knockings," which have been resuscitated in the pres- 
ent day. He was a "perambulator," and, in the words of one of his 
critics, " picked up information on the highway, and scattered it every- 
where as authentic." His most valuable contribution to history is 
found in his Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the \']th and \%th 
Centuries, with Lives of Eminettt Men. The searcher for authentic 
material must carefully scrutinize Aubrey's /ar^j'/ but, with much that 
is doubtful, valuable information may be obtained from his pages. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION. 



The License of the Age. 


Vanbrugh. 


Otway. 


Dry den. 


Farquhar. 


Rowe. 


Wycherley. 


Etherege. 


Lee. 


Congreve. 


Tragedy. 


SoutherH 



The License of the Age. 

'"INHERE is no portion of the literature of this period 
X which so fully represents and explains the social history 
of the age as the drama. With the restoration of Charles it 
returned to England, after a time in which the chief faults 
had been too great rigor in morals. The theatres had been 
closed, all amusements checked, and even poetry and the fine 
arts placed under a ban. In the reign of Charles I., Prynne 
had written his Histrio Mastix, or Scourge of the Stage, in 
which he not only denounced all stage plays, but music and 
dancing ; and also declaimed against hunting, festival days, 
the celebration of Christmas, and Maypoles. For this he 
was indicted in the Star Chamber for libel, and was sentenced 
to stand in the pillory, to lose his ears, to pay the king a fine 
of ;!£5ooo, and to be imprisoned for life. For his attack there 
was much excuse in the license of the former period ; but 
when Puritanism, in its turn, was brought under the three 
spears, the drama was to come back tenfold more injurious 
and more immoral than before. 

From the stern and gloomy morals of the Commonwealth 
we now turn to the debaucheries of the court, — from cropped 

233 



20 * 



234 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

heads and dark cloaks to plumes and velvet, gold lace and 
embroidery, — to the varied fashions of every kind for which 
Paris has always been reiiovvned, and which Charles brought 
back with him from his exile; — from prudish morals to indis- 
criminate debauchery ; from the exercisings of brewers' clerks, 
the expounding of tailors, the catechizing of watermen, to 
the stage, which was now loudly petitioned to supply amuse- 
ment and novelty. Macaulay justly says: "The restraints 
of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently 
borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be 
saints ; these restraints became altogether insupportable when 
they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites ! 
It is quite certain that if the royal family had never returned, 
there would have been a great relaxation of manners." It is 
equally certain, let us add, that morals would not have been 
correspondingly relaxed. The revulsion was terrible. In no 
period of English history was society ever so grossly immoral ; 
and the drama, which we now come to consider, displays this 
immorality and license with a perfect delineation. 

The English people had always been fond of the drama in 
all its forms, and were ready to receive it even contaminated 
as it was by the licentious spirit of the time. An illiterate 
and ignorant people cannot think for themselves ; they act 
upon the precepts and example of tliose above them in knowl- 
edge and social station : thus it is that a dissolute monarch 
and a subservient aristocracy corrupt the masses. 

Dryden's Plays. — Although Dryden's reputation is based 
on his other poems, and although his dramas have conduced 
scarcely at all to his fame, he did play a principal part in this 
department of literary work. Dryden made haste to answer 
the call, and his venal muse wrote to please the town. The 
names of many of his plays and personages are foreign ; but 
their vitality is purely English. Of his first play. The Duke 
of Guise y which was unsuccessful, he tells us: "I undertook 



THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION. 235 

this as the fairest way which the Act of Indemnity had left us, 
as setting forth the rise of the great rebellion, and of exposing 
the villanies of it upon the stage, to precaution posterity 
against the like errors;" — a rebellion the master-spirit of 
which he had eulogized upon his bier ! 

His second play. The Wild Gallant, may be judged by 
the fact that it won for him the favor of Charles II. and of 
his mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland. Pepys saw it "well 
acted;" but says, "It hath little good in it." It is not our 
purpose to give a list of Dryden's plays ; besides their occa- 
sional lewdness, they are very far inferior to his poems, and 
are now rarely read except by the historical student. They 
paid him in ready money, and he cannot ask payment from 
posterity in fame. 

On the 13th of January, 1667-8, (we are told by Pepys,) the 
ladies and the Duke of Monmouth acted The Indian Empe- 
rour at court. 

The same chronicler says : The Maiden Queene was "might- 
ily commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and 
wit ; " but of the Ladys a la Mode he says it was " so mean 
a thing" that, when it was announced for the next night, the 
pit "fell a laughing, because the house was not a quarter 
full." 

But Dryden, as a playwright, does not enjoy the infamous 
honor of a high rank among his fellow - dramatists. The 
proper representations of the drama in that age were, in 
Comedy, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar ; 
and, in Tragedy, Otway, Rowe, and Lee. 

Wycherley. — Of the comedists of this period, where all 
were evil, William Wycherley was the worst. In his four 
plays. Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The 
Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer, he outrages all decency, 
ridicules honesty and virtue, and makes vice always triumph- 
ant. As a young man, profligate with pen and in his life, he 



236 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

was a wicked old man ; for, when sixty-four years of age, he pub- 
lished a miscellany of verses of which Macaulay says: ''The 
style and versification are beneath criticism : the morals are 
those of Rochester. ' ' And yet it is sad to be obliged to say 
that his characters pleased the age, because such men and wo- 
men really lived then, and acted just as he describes them. 
He depicted vice to applaud and not to punish it. Wycherley 
was born in 1640, and died in 17 15. 

CoNGREVE. — William Congreve, who is of the same school 
of morals, is far superior as a writer; indeed, were one name 
to be selected in illustration of our subject, it would be his. 
He was born in 1666, and, after being educated at Trinity 
College, Dublin, was a student at the Middle Temple. His 
first play. The Old Bachelor, produced in his twenty-first year, 
was a great success, and won for him the patronage of Lord 
Halifax. His next. The Double Dealer, caused Dryden to 
proclaim him the equal of Shakspeare ! Perhaps his most 
famous comedy is Love for Love, which is besides an excellent 
index to the morality of the age. The author was quoted 
and caressed; Pope dedicated to him his Translation of the 
Iliad ; and Voltaire considered him the most successful Eng- 
lish writer of comedy. His merit consists in some degree of 
originality, and in the liveliness of his colloquies. His wit is 
brilliant and flashing, but, in the words of Thackeray, the 
world to him "seems to have had no moral at all." 

How much he owed to the French school, and especially 
to Moli^re, may be judged from the fact that a whole scene 
in Love for Love is borrowed from the Don Juan of Moliere. 
It is that in which Trapland comes to collect his debt from 
Valentine Legend. Readers of Moliere will recall the scene 
between Don Juan, Sganarelle and M. Dim.anche, which is 
here, with change of names, taken almost word for word. 
His men are gallants neither from love or passion, but from 
the custom of the age, of which it is said, "it would break 



THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION. 23/ 

Mr. Tattle's heart to think anybody else should be beforehand 
with him ; ' ' and Mr. Tattle was the type of a thousand fine 
gentlemen in the best English society of that day. 

His only tragedy, T/ie Mouj-ning B?-ide, although far below 
those of Shakspeare, is the best of that age ; and Dr. John- 
son says he would go to it to find the most poetical paragraph 
in the range of English poetry. Congreve died in 1729, 
leaving his gains to the Duchess of Marlborough, who cher- 
ished his memory in a very original fashion. She had a 
statue of him in ivory, which went by clockwork, and was 
daily seated at her table ; and another wax-doll imitation, 
whose feet she caused to be blistered and anointed by phy- 
sicians, as the poet's gouty extremities had been. 

■ Congreve was not ashamed to vindicate the drama, licen- 
tious as it was. In the year 1698, Jeremy Collier, a distin- 
guished nonjuring clergyman, published A Short View of the 
Immo7'ality and Profaneness of the English Stage; a very vig- 
orous and severe criticism, containing a great deal of whole- 
some but bitter truth. Congreve came to the defence of the 
stage, and his example was followed by his brother dramatists. 
But Collier was too strong for his enemies, and the defences 
were very weak. There yet existed in England that leaven of 
purity which has steadily since been making its influence felt. 

Vanbrugh. — Sir John Vanbrugh (born in 1666, died in 
1726) was an architect as well as a dramatist, but not great 
in either role. His principal dramas are The Prozwked Wife, 
The City Wives' Confederacy, and The JoiLrney to London 
(finished by CoUey Cibber). His personages are vicious and 
lewd, but quite real ; and his wit is constant and flowing. The 
Provoked Wife is so licentious a play that it is supposed Van- 
brugh afterwards conceived and began his Provoked Husband 
to make some amends for it. This latter play, however, he 
did not complete : it was finished after his death by Cibber, 
who says in the Prologue : 



238 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

This play took birth from principles of truth, 
To make amends for errors past of youth. 

Though vice is natural, 't was never meant 

The stage should show it but for punishment. 

Warm with such thoughts, his muse once more took flame, 

Resolved to bring licentious life to shame. 

If Vanbrugh was not born in France, it is certain that he 
spent many years there, and there acquired the taste and 
handling of the comic drama, which then had its halcyon 
days under Moliere. His dialogue is very spirited, and his 
humor is greater than that of Congreve, who, however, ex- 
celled him in wit. 

The principal architectural efforts of Vanbrugh were the 
design for Castle Howard, and the palace of Blenheim, built 
for Marlborough by the English nation, both of which are 
greater titles to enduring reputation than any of his plays. 

Farquhar. — George Farquhar was born in Londonderry, 
in 1678, and began his studies at Trinity College, Dublin, 
but was soon stage-struck, and became an actor. Not long 
after, he was commissioned in the army, and began to write 
plays in the style and moral tone of the age. Among his nine' 
comedies, those which present that tone best are his Love in 
a Bottle, The Constant Couple, The Recruiting Officer, and 
The Beaux' Stratagem. All his productions were hastily writ- 
ten, but met with great success from their gayety and clever 
plots, especially the last two mentioned, which are not, be- 
sides, so immoral as the others, and which are yet acted upon 
the British stage. 

Etherege. — Sir George Etherege, a coxcomb and a-di- 
plomatist, was born in 1636, and died in 1694.. His plays 
are, equally with the others mentioned, marked by the licen- 
tiousness of the age, which is rendered more insidious by their 



THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION. 239 

elegance. Among them are The Comical Revenge, or Love in 
a Tub, and The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter. 

Tragedy. 
The domain of tragedy, although perhaps not so attractive 
to the English people as comedy, was still sufficiently so to 
invite the attention of the literati. The excitement which is 
produced by exaggerated scenes of distress and death has 
always had a charm for the multitude ; and although the 
principal tragedies of this period are based upon heroic sto- 
ries, many of them of classic origin, the genius of the writer 
displayed itself in applying these to his own times, and in 
introducing that ''touch of nature" which ''makes the whole 
world kin." Human sym.pathy is based upon a community 
of suffering, and the sorrows of one age are similar to those 
of another. Besides, tragedy served, in the period of which 
we are speaking, to give variety and contrast to what would 
otherwise have been the gay monotony of the comic muse. 

Otway. — The first writer to be mentioned in this field is 
Thomas Otway (born in 165 1, died in 1685). ^^ led an 
irregular and wretched life, and died, it is said, from being 
choked by a roll of bread which, after great want, he was 
eating too ravenously. 

His style is extravagant, his pathos too exacting, and his 
delineation of the passions sensational and overwrought. He 
produced in his earlier career Alcibiades and Don Carlos y 
and, later, The Orphan, and The Soldier' s Fortune. But 
the piece by which his fame was secured is Venice Preserved, 
which, based upon history, is fictional in its details. The 
original story is found in the Abbe de St. Real's Histoire de 
la Conjuration du Marquis de Bedamar, or the account of a 
Spanish conspiracy in which the marquis, who was ambassa- 
dor, took part. It is still put upon the stage, with the omis- 
sion, however, of the licentious comic portions found in the 
original play. 



240 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Nicholas Rowe, who was born in 1673, ^ "^^" of fortune 
and a government official, produced seven tragedies, of which 
The Fair Pe^iitent, Lady Jane Grey, and Jane Shore are the 
best. His description of the lover, in the first, has become a 
current phrase : "That haughty, gallant, gay Lothario," — the 
prototype of false lovers since. The plots are too broad, but 
the moral of these tragedies is in most cases good. 

Vci Jane Shore, he has followed the history of the royal mis- 
tress, and has given a moral^ lesson of great efficacy. 

Nathaniel Lee, 165 7-1692 : was a man of dissolute life, 
for some time insane, and met his death in a drunken brawl. 
Of his ten tragedies, the best are The Rival Queens, and The- 
odosius, or The Force of Love. The rival queens of Alexander 
the Great — Roxana and Statira — figure in the first, which is 
still presented upon the stage. It has been called, with just 
critical point, "A great and glorious flight of a bold but fren- 
zied imagination, having as much absurdity as sublimity, and 
as much extravagance as passion j the poet, the genius, the 
scholar are everywhere visible." 

Thomas Southern, 1659-1746: wrote Lsabella, or The 
Fatal Marriage, d.nd Oronooko. In the latter, although yield- 
ing to the corrupt taste of the time in his comic parts, he causes 
his captive Indian prince to teach that period a lesson by his 
pure and noble love for Imoinda. Oronooko is a prince taken 
by the English at Surinam and carried captive to England. 

These writers are the best representatives of those who in 
tragedy and comedy form the staple of that age. Their 
models were copied in succeeding years ; but, with the expul- 
sion of the Stuarts, morals were somewhat mended; and while 
light, gay, and witty productions for the stage were still in 
demand, the extreme licentiousness was repudiated by the 
public ; and the plays of Gibber, Cumberland, Colman, and 
Sheridan, reflecting these better tastes, are free from much of 
the pollution to which we have referred. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 



Contemporar3- Historj'-, i The Messiah.. 

Birth and Early Life. The Iliad. 

Essay on Critieism, Value of the Trafxslation. 

Rape of the Lock. 1 The Odyssey. 



Essay on Man. 
The Artificial SchooL 
Estimate of Pope. 
Other Writeis, 



ALEXANDER POPE is at once one of the greatest names 
in English literature and one of the most remarkable 
illustrations of the fact that the literature is the interpreter of 
English history. He was also a man of singular individuality, 
and may, in some respects, be considered a /usus nature 
among the literary men of his daj^ 

Contemporary History. — He was born in London on 
the 2ist of May, 1688, the year which witnessed the second 
and final expulsion of the Stuarts, in direct line, and the ac- 
cession of a younger branch in the persons of Mary and her 
husband, William of Orange. Pope comes upon the literary 
scene with the new order of political affairs. A dynasty had 
been overthrown, and the power of the parliament had been 
established ; new charters of right had secured the people 
from kingly oppression ; but there was still a strong element 
of opposition and sedition in the Jacobite party, which had 
by no means abandoned the hope of restoring the former 
rule. They were kept in check, indeed, during the reign of 
William and Mary, but they became bolder upon the acces- 
sion of Queen Anne. They hoped to find their efforts facili- 
tated by the fact that she was childless ; and they even as- 
serted that upon her death-bed she had favored the succession 
of the pretender, whom they called James IH. 

21 Q 241 



242 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

In 1 7 15, the year after the accession of George I., the 
electoral prince of Hanover, — whose grandmother was the 
daugliter of James I., — they broke out into open rebellion. 
The pretender landed in Scotland, and made an abortive at- 
tempt to recover the throne. The nation was kept in a state 
of excitement and turmoil until the disaster of Culloden, and 
the final defeat of Charles Edward, the young pretender, in 
1745, one year after the death of Pope. 

These historical facts had a direct influence upon English 
society : the country was divided into factions ; and political 
conflicts sharpened the wits and gave vigor to the conduct 
of men in all ranks. Pope was an interpreter of his age, in 
politics, in general culture, and in social manners and morals. 
Thus he was a politician among the statesmen Bolingbroke, 
Buckingham, Oxford, Sunderland, Halifax, Harley, and 
Marlborough. His Essay on Criticism presents to us the 
artificial taste and technical rules which were established as a 
standard in literature. His Essay on Man, his Moral Epistles, 
and his Universal Prayer are an index to the semi-Christian, 
semi-Grecian ethics of an age too selfish to be orthodox, 
and too progressive to be intolerant. His Rape of the Lock 
is a striking picture of social life, sketched by the hand of 
a gentle satire. His translations of Homer, and their great 
success, are significant of a more extended taste for scholar- 
ship ; not attended, however, with many incentives to origi- 
nality of production. The nobles were still the patrons of 
literature, and they fancied old things which were grand, in 
new and gaudy English dresses. The age was also marked 
by rapid and uniform progress in the English language. The 
sonorous, but cumbrous English of Milton had been greatly 
improved by Dryden ; and we have seen, also, that the terse 
and somewhat crude diction of Dryden's earlier works had 
been polished and rendered more harmonious in his later 
poems. 

This harmony of language seemed to Pope and to his 



POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 243 

patrons the chief aim of the poet, and to make it still more 
tuneful and melodious was the purpose of his life. 

Birth and Early Life. — Pope was the son of a respecta- 
ble linen-draper, who had achieved a competency and re- 
tired to enjoy it. The mother of the poet must have been a 
good one, to have retained the ardent and eulogistic affection 
of her son to the close of her life, as she did. This attach- 
ment is a marked feature in his biography, and at last finds 
vent in her epitaph, in which he calls her ^^ mater optima, 
miilierutii amantissima. ' ' 

Pope was a sickly, dwarfed, precocious child. His early 
studies in Latin and Greek were conducted by priests of the 
Roman Catholic Church, to which his parents belonged ; but 
he soon took his education into his own 'hands. Alone and 
unaided he pursued his classical studies, and made good pro- 
gress in French and German. 

Of his early rhyming powers he says : 

*' I lisped in numbers, for tlie numbers came." 

At the age of twelve, he was taken to Will's Coffee-house,' 
to see the great Dryden, upon whom, as a model, he had 
already determined to fashion himself. 

His first efforts were translations. He made English ver- 
sions of the first book of the Thebais of Statius ; several of 
the stories of Chaucer, and one of Ovid's Episdes, all of 
which were produced before he was fifteen. 

Essay on Criticism. — He was not quite twenty-one when 
he wrote his Essay on Criticism, in which he lays down the 
canons of just criticism, and the causes which prevent it. In 
illustration, he attacks the multitude of critics of that day, and 
is particularly harsh in his handling of a few among them. 
He gained a name by this excellent poem, but he made many 
enemies, and among them one John Dennis, whom he had 



244 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

satirized under the name of Appius. Dennis was his life-long 
foe. 

Perhaps there is no better proof of the lasting and deserved 
popularity of this Essay, than the numerous quotations from 
it, not only in works on rhetoric and literary criticism, but 
in our ordinary intercourse with men. Couplets and lines 
have become household words wherever the English language 
is spoken. How often do we hear the sciolist condemned in 
these words : 

A little learning is a dangerous thing; 
Drink deep, or touch not the Pierian spring? 

Irreverence and rash speculation are satirized thus : 

Nay, fly to altars; there they '11 talk you dead. 
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 

We may waive a special notice of his Pastorals, which, 
like those of Dryden, are but clever imitations of Theocritus 
and anachronisms of the Alexandrian period. Of their mer- 
its, we may judge from his own words. "If they have any 
merit, it is to be attributed to some good old authors, whose 
works as I had leisure to study, so I hope I have not wanted 
care to imitate." 

Rape of the Lock. — The poem which displays most ori- 
ginality of invention is the Rape of the Lock. It is, per- 
haps, the best and most charming specimen of the mock- 
heroic to be" found in English ; and it is specially deserving 
of attention, because it depicts the social life of the period 
in one of its principal phases. Miss Arabella Fermor, one 
of the reigning beauties of London society, while on a pleas- 
ure party on the Thames, had a lock of her hair surreptitiously 
cut off by Lord Petre. Although it was designed as a joke, 
the belle was very angry ; and Pope, who was a friend of both 
persons, wrote this poem to assuage her wrath and to reconcile 
them. It has all the system and construction of an epic. 



POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 245 

The poet describes, with becoming deHcacy, the toilet of the 
lady, at which she is attended by obsequious sylphs. 

The party embark upon the river, and the fair lady is de- 
scribed in the splendor of her charms : 

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, 
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind 
In equal curls, and w^ell conspired to deck, 
With shining ringlets, the smooth, ivory neck. 



Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, 
And beauty draws us by a single hair. 

Surrounding sylphs protect the beauty; and one to whom 
the lock has been given in charge, flutters unfortunately too 
near, and is clipped in two by the scissors that cut the lock. 
It is a rather extravagant conclusion, even in a mock-heroic 
poem, that when the strife was greatest to restore the lock, 
it flew upward : 

A sudden star, it shot through liquid air. 
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair, 

and thus, and always, it 

Adds new glor)' to the shining sphere. 

With these simple and meagre m.aterials. Pope has con- 
structed an harmonious poem in which the sylphs, gnomes, 
and other sprites of the Rosicrucian philosophy find appro- 
priate place and service. It failed in its principal purpose of 
reconciliation, but it has given us the best mock-heroic poem 
in the language. As might have been expected, it called 
forth bitter criticisms from Dennis; and there were not want- 
ing those who saw in it a political significance. Pope's 
pleasantry was aroused at this, and he published A Key to the 
Lock, in which he further mystifies these sage readers : Be- 
linda becomes Great Britain ; the Baron is the Earl of Ox- 
ford ; and Thalestris is the Duchess of Marlborough. 



246 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

The Messiah. — In 1712 there appeared in one of the num- 
bers of The Spectator, his Messiah, a Sacred Eclogue, written 
with the purpose of harmonizing the prophecy of Isaiah and 
the singular oracles of the Pollio, or Fourth Eclogue of Vir- 
gil. Elevated in thought and grand in diction, the Messiah 
has kept its hold upon public favor ever since, and portions 
of it are used as hymns in general worship. Among these 
will be recognized that of which the opening lines are : 

Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise; 
Exalt thy towering head and lift thine eyes. 

In 1713 he published a poem on IVindsor Forest, and an 
Ode on St. Cecilia' s Day, in imitation of Dryden. He also 
furnished the beautiful prologue to Addison's Cato. 

Translation of the Iliad. — He now proposed to him- 
self a task which was to give him more reputation and far 
greater emolument than anything he had yet accomplished — 
a translation of the Iliad of Homer. This was a great de- 
sideratum, and men of all parties conspired to encourage and 
reward him. Chapman's Homer, excellent as it was, was not 
in a popular measure, and was known only to scholars. 

In the execution of this project. Pope labored for six years 
— writing by day and dreaming of his work at night ; translat- 
ing thirty or forty lines before rising in the morning, and 
jotting down portions even while on a journey. Pope's 
polished pentameters, when read, are very unlike the full- 
voiced hexameters of Homer; but the errors in the trans- 
lation are comparatively few and unimportant, and his own 
poetry is in his best vein. The poem was published by sub- 
scription, and was a great pecuniary success. This was in 
part due to the blunt importunity of Dean Swift, who said : 
"The author shall not begin to print until I have a thousand 
guineas for him." Parnell, one of the most accomplished 
Greek scholars of the day, wrote a life of Homer, to be pre- 



POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 24/ 

fixed to the vrork ; and many of the critical notes were written 
by Broome, who had transLited the Iliad into English prose. 
Pope was not without poetical rivals. Tickell produced a 
translation of the first book of the Iliad, which was certainly 
revised, and many thought partly written, by Addison. A 
coolness already existing between Pope and Addison was in- 
creased by this circumstance, which soon led to an open rup- 
ture between them. The public, however, favored Pope's 
version, while a few of the diletianti joined Addison in pre- 
ferring Tickell 's. 

The pecuniary results of Pope's labors were particularly 
gratifying. The work was published in six quarto volumes, 
and had more than six hundred subscribers, at six guineas a 
copy : the amount realized by Pope on the first and subse- 
quent issues was upwards of five thousand pounds — an un- 
precedented payment of bookseller to author in that day. 

Value of the Translation. — This work, in spite of 
the criticism of exact scholars, has retained its popularity 
to the present time. Chapman's Homer has been already 
referred to. Since the days of Pope numerous authors 
have tried their hands upon Homer, translating the whole 
or a part. x\mong these is a very fine poem by Cowper, 
in blank verse, which is praised by the critics, but little 
read. Lord Derby's translation is distinguished for its pro- 
saic accuracy. The recent version of our venerable poet, 
Wm. C. Bryant, is acknowledged to be at once scholarly, 
accurate, and harmonious, and will be of permanent value 
and reputation. But the exquisite tinkling of Pope's lines, 
the pleasant refrain they leave in the memory, like the chim- 
ing of silver bells, will cause them to last, with undimin- 
ished favor, unaffected by more correct rivals, as long as the 
language itself. ''A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope," said the 
great Bendey; ''but pray do not call it Homer." Despite 
this criticism of the Greek scholar, the world has taken 



248 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

it for Homer, and knows Homer almost solely through this 
charming medium. 

The Iliad was issued in successive years, the last two vol- 
umes appearing in 1720. Of course it was savagely attacked 
by Dennis ; but Pope had won more than he had hoped for, 
and might laugh at his enemies. 

With the means he had inherited, increased by the sale of 
his poem. Pope leased a villa on the Thames, at Twickenham, 
which he fitted up as a residence for life. He laid out the 
grounds, built a grotto, and made his villa a famous spot. 

Here he was smitten by the masculine charms of the gifted 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who figures in many of his 
verses, and particularly in the closing lines of the Epistle of 
Eloisa to Abelard. It was a singular alliance, destined to a 
speedy rupture. On her return from Turkey, in 1718, where 
her husband had been the English ambassador, she took a 
home near Pope's villa, and, at his request, sat for her por- 
trait. When, later, they became estranged, she laughed at 
the poet, and his coldness turned into hatred. 

The Odyssey. — The success of his version of the Iliad 
led to his translation of the Odyssey; but this he did with the 
collaboration of Fenton and Broome, the former writing four 
and the latter six books. The volumes ap.peared successively 
in 1725-6, and there was an appendix containing the Batra- 
chomiomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, translated by 
Parnell. For this work Pope received the lion's share of 
profits, his co-laborers being paid only ;£8oo. 

Among his miscellaneous works must be mentioned portions 
of Martinus Scriblerus. One of these, Pei-i Bathous, or Aj't 
of Sinki7ig in Poet7j, was the germ of The Dunciad. 

Like Dryden, he was attacked by the soi-disant poets of the 
day, and retorted in similar style and taste. In imitation of 
Dryden's MacFlecknoe, he wrote The Dunciad^ or epic of the 
Dunces, in the first edition of which Theobald was promoted 



POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 249 

to the vacant throne. It roused a great storm. Authors be- 
sieged the publisher to hinder him from publishing it, while 
booksellers and agents were doing all in their power to pro- 
cure it. In a later edition a new book was added, deposing 
Theobald and elevating Colley Gibber to the throne of Dul- 
ness. This was ill-advised, as the ridicule, which was justly 
applied to Theobald, is not applicable to Gibber. 

Essay on Man. — The intercourse of the poet with the 
gifted but sceptical Lord Bolingbroke is apparent in his 
Essay on Man, in which, with much that is orthodox and 
excellent, the principles and influence of his lordship are 
readily discerned. The first part appeared in 1732, and 
the second some years later. The opinion is no longer held 
that Bolingbroke wrote any part of the poem ; he has only 
infected it. It is one of Pope's best poems in versification 
and diction, and abounds with pithy proverbial sayings, which 
the English world has been using ever since as current money 
in conversational barter. Among many that might be se- 
lected, the following are well known : 

All are but parts of one stupendous whole 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul. 

Know thou thyself, presume not God to scan; 
The proper study of mankind is man. 

A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod; 
An honest man 's the noblest work of God. 

Among the historical teachings of Pope's works and career, 
and also among the curiosities of literature, must be noticed 
the publication of Pope's letters, by Gurll the bookseller, 
without the poet's permission. They .were principally letters 
to Henry Gromvv^ell, Wycherley, Gongreve, Steele, Addison, 
and Swift. There were not wanting those who believed that 
it was a trick of the poet himself to increase his notoriety ; 



250 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

but such an opinion is hardly warranted. These letters form 
a valuable chapter in the Social and literary history of the 
period. 

Pope's Death and Character. — On the 30th of May, 
1744, Pope passed away, after a long illness, during which he 
said he was ''dying of a hundred good symptoms." Indeed, 
so frail and weak had he always been, that it was a wonder 
he lived so long. His weakness of body seems to have acted 
upon his strong mind, which must account for much that 
is satirical and splenetic in his writings. Very short, thin, 
and ill-shaped, his person wanted the compactness necessary 
to stand alone, until it was encased in stays. He needed a 
high chair at table, such as children use ; but he was an epi- 
cure, and a fastidious one; and despite his infirmities, his 
bright, intellectual eye and his courtly manners caused him to 
be noted quite as much as his defects. 

The Artificial School. — Pope has been set forth as the 
head of the Artificial School. This is, perhaps, rather a con- 
venient than an exact designation. He had little of original 
genius, but was an apt imitator and reproducer — what in 
painting would be an excellent copyist. His greatest praise, 
however, is that he reduced to system what had gone before 
him ; his poems present in themselves an art of poetry, with 
technical canons and illustrations, which were long after ser- 
vilely obeyed, and the influence of which is still felt to-day.. 

And this artificial school was in the main due to the artifi- 
cial character of the age. Nature seemed to have lost her 
charms; pastorals were little more than private theatricals, en- 
acted with straw hats and shepherd's crook in drawing-rooms 
or on close-clipped lawns. Culture was confined to court 
and town, and poets found little inducement to consult the 
heart or to woo nature, but wrote what vrould please the 
town or court. This taste gave character to the technical 



POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 25I 

Standards, to which Pope, more than any other writer, gave 
system and coherence. Most of the hterati were men of the 
town ; many were fine gentlemen with a political bias ; and 
thus it is that the school of poets of which Pope is the un- 
challenged head, has been known as the Artificial School. 

In the passage of time, and with the increase of literature, 
the real merits of Pope were for some time neglected, or 
misrepresented. The world is beginning to discern and re- 
cognize these again. Learned, industrious, self-reliant, con- 
troversial, and, above all, harmonious, instead of giving vent 
to the highest fancies in simple language, he has treated the 
common-place — that which is of universal interest — in melo- 
dious and splendid diction. But, above all, he stands as the 
representative of his age : a wit among the comic dramatists 
who were going out and the essayists who were coming in ; 
a man of the world with Lady Mary and the gay parties on the 
Thames ; a polemic, who dealt keen thrusts and v/ho liked 
to see them rankle, and who yet writhed in agony when the 
riposte came j a Roman Catholic in faith and a latitudinarian 
in speech ; — such was Pope as a type of that world in which 
he lived. 

A poet of the first rank he was not ; he invented nothing ; 
but he established the canons of poetry, attuned to exquisite 
harmony the rhymed couplet which Dryden had made so 
powerful an instrument, improved the language, discerned 
and reconnected the discordant parts of literature ; and thus 
it is that he towers above all the poets of his age, and has 
sent his influence through those that followed, even to the 
present day. 

Other Writers of the Period. 

Alatihew Prior, 1664-1721 : in his early youth he was a waiter in his 
uncle's tap-room, but, surmounting all difficulties, he rose to be a dis- 
tinguished poet and diplomatist. He was an envoy to France, where 
he was noted for his wit and ready repartee. His love songs are some- 
what immoral, but exquisitely melodious. His chief poems are : Alma, 



252 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

a philosophic piece in the vein of Hudibras ; Solomon, a Scripture poem ; 
and, the best of all, The City and Country Mouse, a parody on Dryden's 
Hind and Panther, which he wrote in conjunction with Mr. Montague. 
He was imprisoned by the Whigs in \'J\^, and lost all his fortune. He 
was distinguished by having Dr. Johnson as his biographer, in the 
Lives of the Poets. 

John Arbuthnot, 1667-1735: born in Scotland. He was learned, witty, 
and amiable. Eminent in medicine, he was physician to the court of 
Queen Anne. He is chiefly known in literature as the companion of 
Pope and Swift, and as the writer with them of papers in the Martinus 
Scriblerus Club, which was founded in 1 7 14, and of which Pope, Gay, 
Swift, Arbuthnot, Harvey, Atterbury, and others, were the principal 
members. Arbuthnot wrote a History of John Bull, which was de- 
signed to render the war then carried on by Marlborough unpopular, 
and certainly conduced to that end. 

John Gay, 1688-1732: he was of humble origin, but rose by his talents, 
and figured at court. He wrote several dramas in a mock-tragic vein. 
Among these are What D ''ye Call It? and Three Hours after Marriage ; 
but that which gave him permanent reputation is his Beggar'' s Opera, 
of which the hero is a highwayman, and the characters ai'e prostitutes 
and Newgate gentry. It is interspersed with gay and lyrical songs, 
and was rendered particularly effective by the fine acting of Miss Eliza- 
beth Fenton, in the part of Polly. The Shepherd's Week, a pastoral, 
contains more real delineations of rural life than any other poem of the 
period. Another curious piece is entitled, Tf'ivia, or the Art of Walk- 
ing the Streets of London. 

Tho?nas Parnell, 1679-17 18: he was the author of numerous poems, 
among which the only one which has retained popular favor is The 
Hermit, a touching poem founded upon an older story. He wrote the 
life of Homer prefixed to Pope's translation; but it was very much al- 
tered by Pope. 

Thomas Tickell, 1 686-1 740: particularly known as the friend of Addi- 
son. He wrote a translation of the First Book of Homer's Iliad, which 
was corrected by Addison, and contributed several papers to The Spec- 
tator. But he is best known by his Elegy upon Addison, which Dr. 
Johnson calls a very " elegant funeral poem." 

Isaac Watts, 1674-1765: this great writer of hymns was born at South- 
ampton, and became one of the most eminent of the dissenting minis- 
ters of England. He is principally known by his metrical versions of 
the Psalms, and by a great number of original hymns, which have been 



POPE, AND THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 253 

generally used by all denominations of Christians since. He also pro- 
duced many hymns for children, which have become familiar as house- 
hold words. He had a lyrical ear, and an easy, flowing diction, but is 
sometimes careless in his versification and incorrect in his theology. 
During the greater part of his life the honored guest of Sir Thomas 
Abney, he devoted himself to literature. Besides many sermons, he 
produced a treatise on The First Principles of Geology and Astronomy ; 
a work on Logic, or the Right Use of the Reason in the Inquiry after 
Truth ; and A Supplement on the Improvement of the Mind. These 
latter have been superseded as text-books by later and more correct 
inquiry. 
Edward Yowtg, 1681-1765: in his younger days he sought preferment 
at court, but being disappointed in his aspirations, he took orders in the 
Church, and led a retired life. He published a satire entitled, The Love 
of Fa7fie, the Universal Passion, which was quite successful. But his 
chief work, which for a long time was classed with the highest poetic 
efforts, is thQ. Night Thoughts, a series of meditations, daring nine 
nights, on Life, Death, and Immortality. The style is somewhat pom- 
pous, the imagery striking, but frequently unnatural ; the occasional 
descriptions majestic and vivid; and the effect of the whole is grand, 
gloomy, and peculiar. It is full of apothegms, which have been much 
quoted ; and some of his lines and phrases are very familiar to all. 

He wrote papers on many topics, and among his tragedies the best 
known is that entitled The Revenge. Very popular in his own day, 
Young has been steadily declining ih public favor, partly on account 
of the superior claims of modern writers, and partly because of the 
morbid and gloomy views he has taken of human nature. His solemn 
admonitions throng upon the reader like phantoms, and cause him to 
desire more cheerful company. A sketch of the life of Young may be 
found in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 
22 



CHAPTER XXV. 

ADDISON, AND THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 



The Character of the Age. 
Queen Anne. 



George I. 

Addison — The Campaign. 



The Chib. 

Addison's Hymns. 

Person and Literary Character. 



Whigs and Tories. Sir Roger de Coverley 

The Character of the Age. 

TO cater further to the Artificial Age, the literary cravings 
of which far exceeded those of any former period, 
there sprang up a school of Essayists, most of whom were 
also poets, dramatists, and politicians. Among these Addi- 
son, Steele, and Swift stand pre-eminent. Each of them 
was a man of distinct and interesting personality. Two of 
them — Addison and Swift — presented such a remarkable con- 
trast, that it has been usual for writers on this period of Eng- 
lish Literature to bring them together as foils to each other. 
This has led to injustice towards Swift ; they should be placed 
in juxtaposition because they are of the same period, and be- 
cause of their joint efforts in the literary development of the 
age. The period is distinctly marked. We speak as cur- 
rently of the wits and the essayists of Queen Anne's reign 
as we do of the authors of the Elizabethan age. 

A glance at contemporary history will give us an intelligent 
clue to our literary inquiries, and cause us to observe the his- 
torical character of the literature. 

To a casual observer, the reign of Queen Anne seems par- 
ticularly untroubled and prosperous. English history calls 
it the time of "Good Queen Anne; " and it is referred to 
with great unction by the laudator temporis acti, in unjust 

254 



ADDISON, AND THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 255 

comparison with the period which has since intervened, as 
well as with that which preceded it. 

Queen Anne. — The queen was a Protestant, as opposed 
to the Romanists and Jacobites ; a faithful wife, and a tender 
mother in her memory of several children who died young. 
She was merciful, pure^ and gracious to her subjects. Her reign 
was tolerant. There was plenty at home ; rebellion and civil 
war were at least latent. Abroad, England was greatly dis- 
tinguished by the victories of Marlborough and Eugene. 
But to one who looks through this veil of prosperity, a curi- 
ous history is unfolded. The fires of faction were scarcely 
smouldering. It was the transition period between the ex- 
piring dynasty of the direct line of Stuarts and the coming 
of the Hanoverian house. Women took part in politics ; 
sermons like that of Sacheverell against the dissenters and 
the government were thundered from the pulpit. Volcanic 
fires were at work ; the low rumblings of an earthquake were 
heard from time to time, and gave constant cause of concern 
to the queen and her statesmen. Men of rank conspired 
against each other ; the moral license of former reigns seems 
to have been forgotten in political intrigue. When James II. 
had been driven out in 1688, the English conscience compro- 
mised on the score of the divine right of kings, by taking his 
daughter Mary and her husband as joint monarchs. To do 
this, they affected to call the king's son by his second wife, 
born in that year, a pretender. It was said that he was 
the child of another woman, and had been brought to the 
queen's bedside in a warming-pan, that James might be able 
to present, thus fraudulently, a Roman Catholic heir to the 
throne. In this they did the king injustice, and greater in- 
justice to the queen, Maria de Modena, a pleasing and inno- 
cent woman, who had, by her virtues and personal popularity 
alone, kept the king on his throne, in spite of his pernicious 
measures. 



256 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

When the dynasty was overthrown, the parliament had 
presented to William and Mary A Bill of Rights, in which 
the people's grievances were set forth, and their rights enu- 
merated and insisted upon; and this was accepted by the mon- 
archs as a condition of their tenure. 

Mary died in 1695, and when William followed her, in 
1702, Anne, the second daughter of James, ascended the 
throne. Had she refused the succession, there would have 
been a furious war between the Jacobites and the Hanover- 
ians. In 1 714, Anne died childless, but her reign had bridged 
the chasm between the experiment of William and Mary 
and the house of Hanover. In default of direct heirs to 
Queen Anne, the succession was in this Hanoverian house ; 
represented in the person of the Electress Sophia, the grand- 
daughter of James I., through his daughter, Elizabeth of 
Bohemia. But this lineage of blood had lost all English 
affinities and sympathies. 

Meanwhile, the child born to James II., in 1688, had grown 
to be a man, and stood ready, on the death of Queen Anne, 
to re-affirm his claim to the throne. It was said that, al- 
though, on account of the plottings of the Jacobites, a price 
had been put upon his head, the queen herself wished him 
to succeed, and had expressed scruples about her own right 
to reign. She greatly disliked the family of Hanover, and 
while she was on her death-bed, the pretender had been 
brought to England, in the hope that she would declare him 
her successor. The elements of discord asserted themselves 
still more strongly. Whigs and Tories in politics, Roman- 
ists and Protestants in creed, Jacobite and Hanoverian in 
loyalty, opposed each other, harassing the feeble queen, and 
keeping the realm in continual ferment. 

Whigs and Tories. — The Whigs were those who declared 
that kingly power was solely for the good of the subject ; that 
the reformed creed was the religion of the realm ; that James 



ADDISON, AND THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 25/ 

had forfeited the throne, and that his son was a pretender ; 
and that the power justly passed to the house of Hanover. 
The Tories asserted that monarchs ruled by divine right only; 
and that if, when religion was at stake, the king might be 
deposed, this could not affect the succession. 

Anne escaped her troubles by dying, in 1714. Sophia, the 
Electress of Hanover, who had only wished to live, she said, 
long enough to have engraved upon her tombstone: "Here 
lies Sophia, Queen of England," died, in spite of this desire, 
only a few weeks before the queen ; and the new heir to the 
throne was her son, George Louis of Brunswick-Luneburg, 
electoral prince of Hanover. 

He came cautiously and selfishly to the throne of England; 
he felt his way, and left a line of retreat open ; he brought 
not a spice of honest English sentiment, but he introduced the 
filth of the electoral court. As gross in his conduct as Charles 
11. , he had indeed a prosperous reign, because it was based 
upon a just and tolerant Constitution ; because the English were 
in reality not governed by a king, but by well-enacted laws. 

The effect of all this political turmoil upon the leading men 
in England had been manifest ; both parties had been expec- 
tant, and many of the statesmen had been upon the fence, 
ready to get down on one side or the other, according to cir- 
cumstances. Marlborough left the Tories and joined the 
Whigs; Swift, who had been a Whig, joined the Tories. 
The queen's first ministry had consisted of Whigs and the 
more moderate Tories ; but as she fell away from the Marl- 
boroughs, she threw herself into the hands of the Tories, 
who had determined, and now achieved, the downfall of 
Marlborough. 

Such was the reign of good Queen Anne. With this brief 
sketch as a preliminary, we return to the literature, which, 
like her coin, bore her image and carried it into succeeding 
reigns. In literature, the age of Queen Anne extends far 
beyond her lifetime. 

22* R 



258 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Addison. — The principal name of this period is that of Jo- 
seph Addison. He was the son of the rector of Milston, in Wilt- 
shire, and was born in 1672. Old enough in 1688 to appre- 
ciate the revolution, as early as he could wield his pen, he used 
it in the cause of the new monarchs. At the age of fifteen 
he was sent from the Charter-House to Oxford ; and there 
he wrote some Latin yerses, for which he was rewarded 
by a university scholarship. After pursuing his studies at 
Oxford, he began his literary career. In his twenty-second 
year he wrote a poetical address to Dryden ; but he chiefly 
sought preferment through political poetry. In 1695 he 
wrote a poem to the king, which was well received ; and in 
1699 he received a pension of ^^300. In 1701 he went upon 
the Continent, and travelled principally in France and Italy. 
On his return, he published his travels, and a Poetical Epistle 
ft'om Italy, which are interesting as delineating continental 
scenes and manners in that day. Of the travels, Dr. John- 
son said, "they might have been written at home;" but 
he praised the poetical epistle as the finest of Addison's poet- 
ical works. 

Upon the accession of Queen Anne, he continued to pay 
. his court in verse. When the great battle of Blenheim was 
fought, in 1704, he at once published an artificial poem 
called The Campaign, which has received the fitting name of 
the Rhymed Despatch. . Eulogistic of Marlborough and de- 
scriptive of his army manoeuvres, its chief value is to be 
found in its historical character, and not in any poetic merit. 
It was a political paper, and he was rewarded for it by the 
appointment of Commissioner of Appeals, in which post he 
succeeded the philosopher Locke. 

The spirit of this poem is found in the following lines : 

Fiction may deck the truth with spurious rays, 
And round the hero cast a borrowed blaze; 
Marlboro's exploits appear divinely bright, 
And proudly shine in their own native light. 



ADDISON, AND THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 259 

If we look for a contrast to this poem, indicating with it 
the two political sides of the question, it may be found in 
Swift's tract on The Conduct of the Allies^ which asserts that 
the war had been maintained to gratify the ambition and 
greed of Marlborough, and also for the benefit of the Allies. 
Addison was appointed, as a reward for his poem, Under- 
Secretary of State. 

To this extent Addison was the historian by purpose. A 
moderate partisan, he eulogized King William, Marlborough, 
Lord Somers, Lord Halifax, and others, and thus commended 
himself to the crown ; and in several elegant articles in TJie 
Spectator, he sought to mitigate the fierce party spirit of the 
time. 

Sir Roger de Coverley. — But it is the unconscious his- 
torian with whom we are most charmed, and by whom we 
are best instructed. It is in this character that Addison pre- 
sents himself in his numerous contributions to The Spectator, 
The Tatler, and The Guardian. Amid much that is now 
considered pedantic and artificial, and which, in those faults, 
marks the age, are to be found as striking and truthful delin- 
eations of English life and society in that day as Chaucer has 
given us of an earlier period. 

Those who no longer read The Spectator as a model of 
style and learning, must continue to prize it for these rare 
historic teachings. The men and women walk before us as 
in some antique representation in a social festival, when grand- 
mothers' brocades are taken^out, when curious fashions are 
displayed, when Honoria and Flavia, Fidelia and Gloriana 
dress and speak and ogle and flirt just as Addison saw and 
photographed them. We have their subjects of interest, their 
forms of gossip, the existing abuses of the day, their taste 
in letters, their opinions upon the works of literature, in all 
their freshness. 

The fullest and most systematic of these social delineations 



260 • ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

is found in the sketch of The Club and Sir Roger de Coverley. 
The creation of character is excellent. Each member, indi- 
vidual and distinct, is also the type of a class. 

The Club. — There is Will Honeycomb, the old beau, 
*'a gentleman who, according to his years, should be in the 
decline of his life, but having ever been careful of his per- 
son, and always had an easy fortune, time has made but very 
little impression, either by wrinkles on his forehead or traces 
on his brain." He knew from what French woman this 
manner of curling the hair came, who invented hoops, and 
whose vanity to show her foot brought in short dresses. He 
is a woman-killer, sceptical about marriage ; and at length he 
gives the fair sex ample satisfaction for his cruelty and ego- 
tism by marrying, unknown to his friends, a farmer's daugh- 
ter, whose face and virtues are her only fortune. 

Captain Sentry, the nephew of Sir Roger, is, it may be 
supposed, the essayist's ideal of what an English officer should 
be — a courageous soldier and a modest gentleman. 

Sir Andrew Freeport is the retired merchant, drawn to the 
life. He is moderate in politics, as expediency in that age 
would suggest. Thoroughly satisfied of the naval supremacy 
of England, he calls the sea, "the British Common." He 
is the founder of his own fortune, and is satisfied to transmit 
to posterity an unsullied name, a goodly store of wealth, and 
the title he has so honorably won. 

In The Templar, we have a satire upon a certain class of 
lawyers. It is indicative of that classical age, that he under- 
stands Aristotle and Longinus better than Littleton and Coke, 
and is happy in anything but law — a briefless barrister, but a 
gentleman of consideration. 

But the most charming, the most living portrait is that of 
Sir Roger de Coverley, an English country gentleman, as he 
ought to be, and as not a few really were. What a generous 
humanity for all wells forth from his simple and loving heart ! 



ADDISON, AND THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 261 

He has such a mirthful cast in his behavior that he is rather 
loved than esteemed. Repulsed by a fair widow, several 
years before, he keeps his sentiment alive by wearing a coat 
and doublet of the same cut that was in fashion at the time, 
which, he tells us, has been out and in twelve times since he 
first wore it. All the young women profess to love him, and 
all the young men are glad of his company. 

Last of all is the clergyman, whose piety is all reverence, 
and who talks and acts '' as one who is hastening to the object 
of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays and 
infirmities." 

It is said that Addison, warned by the fate of Cervantes, — • 
whose noble hero, Don Quixote, was killed by another pen, — ■ 
determined to conduct Sir Roger to the tomb himself; and 
the knight makes a fitting end. He congratulates his nephew, 
Captain Sentry, upon his succession to the inheritance ; he 
is thoughtful of old friends and old servants. In a word, so 
excellent was his life, and so touching the story of his death, 
that we feel like mourners at a real grave. Indeed he did 
live, and still lives, — one type of the English country gentle- 
man one hundred and fifty years ago. Other types there 
were, not so pleasant to contemplate ; but Addison's Sir 
Roger de Coverley and Fielding's Squire Allworthy vindicate 
their class in that age. 

• 

Addison's .Hymns. — Addison appears to us also as the 
writer of beautiful hymns, and has paraphrased some of the 
Psalms. In this, like Watts, he catered to a decided religious 
craving of that day. In a Protestant realm, and by reason 
of religious controversy, the fine old hymns of the Latin 
church, which are now renewing their youth in an English 
dress, had fallen into disrepute : hymnody had, to some ex- 
tent, superseded the plain chant. Hymns were in demand. 
Poets like Addison and Watts provided for this new want ; 
and from the beauty of his few contributions, our great regret 



262 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

is that Addison wrote so few. Every one he did v/rite is a 
gem in many collections. Among them we have that admira- 
ble paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm : 

The Lord my pasture shall prepare, 
And feed me with a shepherd's care; 



and the hymn 



I 



When all Thy mercies, O my God, 
My rising soul surveys. 



None, however, is so beautiful, stately, and polished as the 
Divine Ode, so pleasant to all people, little and large, — 

The spacious firmament on high. 

His Person and Character. — In closing this brief 
sketch of Addison, a few words are necessary as to his per- 
sonality, and an estimate of his powers. In 171 6 he married 
the Countess-Dov/ager of Warwick, and parted with inde- 
pendence to live with a coronet. His married life was not 
happy. The lady was cold and exacting ; and, it must be 
confessed, the poet loved a bottle at the club-room or tavern 
better than the luxuries of Holland House ; and not infre- 
quently this conviviality led him to excess. He died in 1719, 
in his forty-eighth year, and made a truly pious end. He 
wished, he said, to atone for any injuries he had done to 
others, and sent for his sceptical and dissolute step-son. Lord 
Warwick, to show him how a Christian could die. A mon- 
ument has been... erected to his memory in the Poets' Corner 
of Westminster Abbey, and the closing words of the inscrip- 
tion upon it calls him " the honor and delight of the English 
nation." 

As a man, he was grave and retiring: he had a high opinion 
of his own powers ; in company he was extremely diffident ; 
in the main, he was moral, just, and consistent. His intem- 
perance was in part the custom of the age and in part a physi- 



ADDISON, AND THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. 263 

cal failing, and it must have been excessive to be distinguished 
in that age. In the Latin-English of Dr. Johnson, "It is 
not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the 
manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity of 
his sober hours." This failing must be regarded as a blot 
on his fame. 

He was the most accomplished writer of his own age, and 
in elegance of style superior to all who had gone before him. 

In the words of his epitaph, his prose pape-rs "encouraged 
the good and reformed the improvident, tamed the wicked, 
and in some degree made them in love with virtue." His 
poetry is chiefly of historical value, in that it represents so 
distinctly the Artificial School ; but it is now very little read. 
His drama entitled Cato was modelled upon the French 
drama of the classical school, with its singular preservation 
of the unities. But his contributions to The Spectator and 
other periodicals are historically of great value. Here he 
abandons the artificial school ; nothing in his delineations 
of character is simply statuesque or pictorial. He has done 
for us what the historians have left undone. They present 
processions of automata moving to the sound of trumpet and 
drum, ushered by Black Rod or Garter King-at-arms ; but in 
Addison we find that Promethean heat which relumes their 
life j the galvanic motion becomes a living stride ; the puppet 
eyes emit fire ; the automata are men. Thus it is, that, al- 
though The Spectator, once read as a model of taste and 
style, has become antiquated and has been superseded, it 
must still be resorted to for its life-like portraiture of men 
and women, manners and customs, and will be found truer 
and more valuable for these than history itself. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 



Sir Richard Steele. 
Periodicals. 
The Crisis. 
His Last Days. 



Jonathan Swift — Poems. 
The Tale of a Tub. 
Batde of the Books, 
Pamphlets. 



M. B. Drapier. 
Gulliver's Travels. 
Stella and Vanessa. 
His Character and Death. 



CONTEMPORARY with Addison, and forming with him 
a literary fraternity, Steele and Swift were besides men 
of distinct prominence, and clearly represent the age in which 
they lived. 

Sir Richard Steele. — If Addison were chosen as the 
principal literary figure of the period, a sketch of his life 
would be incomplete without a large mention of his lifelong 
friend and collaborator, Steele. If to Bacon belongs the 
honor of being the first writer and the namer of the English 
essay, Steele may claim that of being the first periodical 
essayist. 

He was born in Dublin, in 1671, of English parents; his 
father being at the time secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland. He received his early education at the Charter- 
House school, in London, an institution which has numbered 
among its pupils many who have gained distinguished names 
in literature. Here he met and formed a permanent friend- 
ship with Addison. He was afterwards entered as a student 
at Morton College, Oxford ; but he led there a wild and reck- 
less life, and leaving without a degree, he enlisted as a private 
in the Horse Guards. Through the influence of his friends, 

264 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 265 

he was made a cornet, and afterwards a captain, in the Fusi- 
leers ; but this only gave him opportunity for continued dis- 
sipation. His principles \vere better than his conduct ; and, 
haunted by conscience, he made an effort to reform himself- 
by writing a devotional work called The Christian Hero ; 
but there was such a contrast between his precepts and his 
life, that he was laughed at by the town. Between 1701 and 
1704 he produced his three comedies, The Funeral, or Grief 
a la Mode; The Tender Husband, and The Lyivg Lover. The 
first two were successful upon the stage, but the last was a 
complete failure. Disgusted for the time with the drama, he 
was led to find his true place as the writer of those light, 
brilliant, periodical essays which form a prominent literary 
feature of the reign of Queen Anne. These Essays were 
com^ments, suggestions, strictures, and satires upon the age. 
They were of immediate and local interest then, and have 
now a value which the writers did not foresee : they are un- 
conscious history. 

Periodicals. — The first of these periodicals was The Tat- 
ler, a penny sheet, issued tri-weekly, on post-days. The first 
number appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, and asserted 
the very laudable purpose " to expose the deceits, sins, and 
vanities of the former age, and to make virtue, simplicity, 
and plain-dealing the law of social life." '' For this pur- 
pose," in the words of Dr. Johnson,"^ "nothing is so proper 
as the frequent publication of short papers, which we read not 
as study, but amusem.ent. If the subject be slight, the treatise 
is short. The busy may find time, and the idle may find 
patience." One nom de plume of Steele was Isaac Bicker- 
staff, which he borrowed from Swift, who had issued party 
pamphlets under that name. 

The Taller was a success. The fluent pen of Addison gave 
it valuable assistance; and in January, 1711, it was merged 

* Life of Addison. 
23 



266 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

into, rather than superseded by, The Spectator, which was 
issued six days in the week. 

In this new periodical, Steele wrote the paper containing 
the original sketch of Sir Roger de Coverley and The Club ; 
but, as has been already said, Addison adopted, elaborated, 
and finished this in several later papers. Steele had been by 
far the larger contributor to The Tatle7\ Of all the articles 
in The Spectator, Steele wrote two hundred and forty, and 
Addison two hundred and seventy-four; the rest were by 
various hands. In March, 1713, when The Spectator was 
commencing its seventh volume, The Guardian made its ap- 
pearance. For the first volume of The Guardian, Addison 
wrote but one paper ; but for the second he wrote more than 
Steele. Of the one hundred and seventy-six numbers of that 
periodical, eighty-two of the papers were by Steele and fifty- 
three by Addison. If the writings of Addison were more 
scholarly and elegant, those of Steele were more vivacious 
and brilliant ; and together they have produced a series of 
essays which have not been surpassed in later times, and which 
are vividly delineative of their own. 

The Crisis. — The career of Steele was varied and erratic. 
He held several public offices, was a justice of the peace, and 
a member of parliament. He wrote numerous political 
tracts, which are not without historical value. For one 
pamphlet of a political character, entitled The Crisis, he was 
expelled from parliament for libel ; but upon the death of 
Queen Anne, he again found himself in favor. He was knighted 
in 1 7 15, and received several lucrative appointments. 

He was an eloquent orator, and as a writer rapid and 
brilliant, but not profound. Even thus, however, he catered 
to an age at once artificial and superficial. Very observant 
of what he saw, he rushed to his closet and jotted down his 
views in electrical words, which made themselves immediately 
and distinctly felt. 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 26/ 

His Last Days. — Near the close of his life he produced 
a very successful comedy, entitled The Conscious Lover, which 
would have been of pecuniary value to him, were it not that 
he v/as already overwhelmed with debt. His end was a sad 
one ; but he reaped what his extravagance and recklessness 
had sown. Shattered in health and ruined in fortune, he re- 
treated from the great world into homely retirement in 
Wales, where he lived, poor and hidden, in a humble cot- 
tage at Llangunnor. His end was heralded by an attack of 
paralysis, and he died in 1729. 

After his death, his letters were published ; and in the pri- 
vate history which they unfold, he appears, notwithstanding 
all his follies, in the light of a tender husband and of an 
amiable and unselfish man. He had principle, but he lacked 
resolution ; and the wild, vacillating character of his life is 
mirrored in his writings, where The Chi'istian Hero stands 
in singular contrast to the comic personages of his dramas. 
He was a genial critic. His exuberant wit and humor re- 
proved without wounding ; he was not severe enough to be a 
public censor, nor pedantic enough to be the pedagogue of an 
age which often needed the lash rather than the gentle re- 
proof, and upon which a merciful clemency lost its end if 
not its praises. He deserves credit for an attempt, however 
feeble, to reward virtue upon the stage, after the wholesale 
rewards which vice had reaped in the age of Charles H. 

Steele has been overshadowed, in his connection with Addi- 
son, by the more dignified and consistent career, the greater 
social respectability, and the more elegant and scholarly style 
of his friend ; and yet in much that they jointly accomplished, 
the merit of Steele is really as great, and conduces much to 
the reputation of Addison. The one husbanded and cher- 
ished his fame; the other flung it away or lavished it upon his 
colleagues. As contributors to history, they claim an equal 
share of our gratitude and praise. 



268 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Jonathan Swift. — The grandfather of Swift was vicar 
of Goodrich, in Herefordshire. His father and mother were 
both English, but he was born in Dublin, in the year 1667. 
A posthumous child, he came into the world seven months 
after his father's death. From his earliest youth, he deplored 
the circumstances among which his lot had been cast. He 
was dependent upon his uncle, Godwin Swift, himself a poor 
man ; but was not grateful for his assistance, always saying 
that his uncle had given him the education of a dog. At the 
University of Dublin, where he was entered, he did not bear 
a good character : he was frequently absent from his duties 
and negligent of his studies ; and although he read history 
and poetry, he was considered stupid as well as idle. He 
was more than once admonished and suspended, but at length 
received his degree, Speciali gratia; which special act of 
grace implied that he had not fairly earned it. Piqued by 
this, he set to work in real earnest, and is said to have stud- 
ied eight hours a day for eight years. Thus, from an idle 
and unsuccessful collegian, he became a man of considerable 
learning and a powerful writer. 

He was a distant connection of Sir William Temple, through 
Lady Temple ; and he went, by his mother's advice, to live 
with that distinguished man at his seat, Shene, in Moor Park, 
as private secretary. 

In this position Swift seems to have led an uncomfortable 
life, ranking somewhere between the family and the upper 
servants. Sir William Temple was disposed to be kind, but 
found it difficult to converse with him on account of his mo- 
roseness and other peculiarities. At Shene he met King 
William HI., who talked with him, and offered him a cap- 
taincy in the army. This Swift declined, knowing his unfit- 
ness for the post, and doubtless feeling the promptings of a 
higher ambition. It was also at Shene that he met a young 
girl, whose history was thenceforth to be mingled with his in 
sadness and sorrow, during their lives. This was Esther John- 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 269 

son, the daughter of Temple's housekeeper, and surmised, at 
a later day, to be the natural daughter of Temple himself. 
When the young secretary first met her, she was fourteen years 
of age, very clever and beautiful ; and they fell in love with 
each other. 

We cannot dwell at length upon the events of his life. 
His versatile pen was prolific of poetry, sentimental and satiri- 
cal ; of political allegories of great potency, of fiction erected 
of impossible materials, and yet so creating and peopling a 
world of fancy as to illude the reader into temporary belief 
in its truth. 

Poems. — His poems are rather sententious than harmo- 
nious. His power, however, was great ; he managed verse 
as an engine, and had an entire mastery over rhyme, which 
masters so many would-be poets. His Odes are classically 
constructed, but massive and cumbrous. His satirical poems 
are eminently historical, ranging over and attacking almost 
every topic, political, religious, and social. Among the most 
characteristic of his miscellaneous verses are Epigrams and 
Epistles, Clever Tom Pinch Going to be Hanged, Advice to 
Gj'ub Street Writers, Helter-Skelter, The Puppet Show, and 
similar odd pieces, frequently scurrilous, bitter, and lewd in 
expression. The writer of English history consults these as 
he does the penny ballads, lampoons, and caricatures of the 
day, — to discern the animus of parties and the methods of 
hostile factions. 

But it is in his inimitable prose writings that Swift is of 
most value to the historical student. Against all comers he 
stood the Goliath of pamphleteers in the reign of Queen Anne, 
and there arose no David who could slay him. 

The Tale of a Tub. — While an unappreciated student 
at the university, he had sketched a satirical piece, which he 
finished and published in 1704, under the title of The Tale 
23 * 



270 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

of a Tub. As a tub is thrown overboard at sea to divert a 
whale, so this is supposed to be a sop cast out to the Leviathan 
of Hobbes, to prevent it from injuring the vessel of state. 
The story is a satire aimed against the Roman Catholics on 
the one hand, and the Presbyterians on -the other, in order 
that he may exalt the Church of England as, in his judg- 
ment, free from the errors of both, and a just and happy 
medimxi between the two extremes. His own opinion of its 
merits iswTlI known : in one of his later years, when his hand 
had lost its cunning, he is said to have exclaimed, as he picked 
it up, "What a genius I had when I wrote that book ! " The 
characters of the story are Peter (representing St. Peter, or 
the Roman Catholic Church), Martin (Luther, or the Church 
of England), and Jack (John Calvin, or the Presbyterians). 
By their father's will each had been left a suit of clothes, 
made in the fashion of his day. To this Peter added laces 
and fringes ; Martin took off some of the ornaments of 
doubtful taste ; but Jack ripped and tore off the trimmings 
of his dress to such an extent that he was in danger of ex- 
posing his nakedness. It is said that the invective was so 
strong and the satire so bitter, that they presented a bar to 
that preferment which Swift might otherwise have obtained. 
He appears at this time to .have cared little for public opin- 
ion, except that it should fear his trenchant wit and do homage 
to his genius. 

The Battle of the Books. — In the same year, 1704, he 
also published The Battle of the Books, the idea of which 
was taken from a French work of Courtraye, entitled '■^ His- 
toire de la gue?'re nouvelIer,ient declaree ent7'e, les A?icie?is et 
les Modernesy Swift's work was written in furtherance of 
the views of his patron, Temple, who had some time before 
engaged in the controversy as to the relative merits of 
ancient and modern learning, and wha^ in the words of 
Macaulay, "was so absurd as to set up his own authority 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 2/1 

against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and 
philology." 

The Batik of the- Books is of present value, as it affords 
information upon the opinions then held on a question which, 
in various forms, has been agitating the literary world ever 
since. In it Swift compares Dryden, Wotten, and Bentley 
with the old authors in St. James's Library, where the battle 
of the books is said to have taken place. 

Upon the death of Sir William Temple, in 1699, Swift had 
gone to London. He was ambitious of power and money, 
and when he found little chance of preferment among the 
Whigs, he became a Tory. It m.ust be said, in explanation 
of this change, that, although he had called himself a Wliig, 
he had disliked m^a^ny of their opinions, and had never heart- 
ily espoused their cause. Like others already referred to, he 
watched the political horizon, and was ready for a change' 
when circumstances should warrant it. This change and its 
causes are set forth in, his Bickeisiaff' s Ridicule of Astrology 
and Sac7'ame7ital Test. 

The Whigs tried hard to retain him \ the Tories were re- 
joiced to. receive him, and modes of preferment for him 
were openly canvassed. One of these v/as to make him Bishop 
of Virginia, with metropolitan powers in America; but it 
failed. He was also recommended for the See of Hereford ; 
but persons near the queen advised her "to be sure that the 
man she was going to make a bishop was a Christian." Thus 
far he had only been made rector of Agher and vicar of 
Laracor and Rathbeggin. 

Various Pamphlets. —His Argument Against the Abolition 
of Christianity, Dr. Johnson calls "a very happy and judi- 
cious irony." Li 17 10 he wrote a paper, at the request of 
the Irish primate, petitioning the queen to remit the first- 
fruits and twentieth parts to the Irish clergy. In 171 2, ten 
days before the meeting of parliament, he published his Cott- 



2/2 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

duct of the Allies, which, exposing the greed of Marlborough, 
persuaded the nation to make peace. A supplement to this 
is found in Reflections on the Barrier Treaty, in which he 
shows how little English interests had been consulted in that 
negotiation. 

His pamphlet on The Public Spirit of the Whigs, in an- 
swer to Steele's Crisis, was so terrible a bomb-shell thrown 
into the camp of his former friends, and so insulting to the 
Scotch, that ;£3oo were offered by the queen, at the instance 
of the Scotch lords, for the discovery of the author ; but with- 
out success. 

At last his versatile and powerful pen obtained some meas- 
ure of reward: in 1713 he was made Dean of St. Patrick's, 
in Dublin, with a stipend of ^700 per annum. This was his 
greatest and last preferment. 

On the accession of George L, in the following year, he 
paid his court, but was received with something more than 
coldness. He withdrew to his deanery in Dublin, and; in 
the words of Johnson, "commenced Irishman for life, and 
was to contrive how he might be best accommodated in a 
country where he considered himself as in a state of exile." 
After some misunderstanding between himself and his Irish 
fellow-citizens, he espoused their cause so warmly that he 
became the most popular man in Ireland. In 1721 he could 
write to Pope, ''I neither know the names nor the number 
of the family which now reigneth, further than the prayer- 
book informeth me." His letters, signed M. B. Drapier, 
on Irish manufactures, and especially those in opposition to 
Wood's monopoly of copper coinage, in 1724, wrought upon 
the people, producing such a spirit of resistance that the pro- 
ject of a debased coinage failed; and so influential did Swift 
become, that he was able to say to the Archbishop of Dublin, 
'' Had I raised my finger, the mob would have torn you to 
l)ieces." This popularity was increased by the fact that a 
reward of jQz^o was offered by Lord Carteret and the privy 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 



VI 



council for the discovery of the authorship of the fourth let- 
ter; but although it was commonly known that Swift was the 
author, proof, could not be obtained. Carteret, the Lord 
Lieutenant, afterwards said, "When people ask me how I 
governed Ireland, I said that I pleased Doctor Swift." 

Thus-far Swift's literary labors are manifest history : we come 
now to consider that great w^ork, Gulliver's Travels, — the 
most successful of its kind ever written, —in which, with all 
the charm of fiction in plot, incident, and description, he 
pictures the great men and the political parties of the day. 



Gulliver's Travels. — Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon's mate, 
finds himself shipwrecked on the shore of the country of 
Lilliput, the people of which are only six inches in height. 
His adventures are so vividly described that our charmed 
fancy places us among them as we read, and we, for a time, 
abandon ourselves to a belief in their reality. It was, how- 
ever, begun as a political" satire ; in the insignificance of the 
court of pigmies, he attacks the feebleness and folly of the 
new reign. Flimnap, the prime minister of Lilliput, is a 
caricature of Walpole ; the Big Indians and Little Indians 
represent the Protestants and Roman Catholics ; the High 
Heels and Low Heels stand for the Whigs and Tories ; ^nd 
the heir-apparent, who wears one heel high and the other 
low, is the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., who fa- 
vored both parties in order to gain both to his purpose. 

In his second voyage, that to Brobdignag, his satirical 
imagination took a wider range — European politics as they 
appear to a superior intelligence, illustrated by a man of 
sixty feet in comparison with one of six. As Gulliver had 
looked with curious contempt upon the united efforts of the 
Lilliputians, he now found himself in great jeopardy and fear 
when in the hands of a giant of Brobdignag. As the pigmy 
metropolis, five hundred yards square, was to London, so 
were London and other European capitals to the giants' city, 

S 



274 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

two thousand miles in circumference. And what are the ar- 
mies of Europe, when compared with that magnificent cavalry 
manoeuvring on a parade-ground twenty miles square, each 
mounted trooper ninety feet high, and all, as they draw their 
swords at command, representing ten thousand flashes of 
lightning ? 

The third part contains the voyage of Gulliver — no less 
improbable than the former ones — to Laputa, the flying island 
of projectors and visionaries. This is a varied satire upon 
the Royal Society, the eccentricities of the savans, empirics 
of all kinds, mathematical magic, and the like. In this, politi- 
cal schemes to restore the pretender are aimed at. The Mis- 
sissippi Scheme and the South Sea bubble are denounced. 
Here, too, in his journey to Luggnagg, he introduces the sad 
and revolting picture of the Struldbrugs, those human beings 
who live on, losing all their power and becoming hideously 
old. 

In his last voyage — to the land of the Houyhnhmjis — his 
misanthropy is painfully manifest. This is the country where 
horses are masters, and men a servile and degraded race ; 
and he has painted the men so brutish and filthy that the 
satire loses its point. The power of satire lies in contrast ; 
we must compare the evil in men with the good : when the 
whole race is included in one sweeping condemnation, and 
an inferior being exalted, in opposition to all possibility, the 
standard is absurd, and the satirist loses his pains. 

The horses are the Uouyhnhnms, (the name is an attempt 
to imitate a neigh,) a noble race, who are amazed and dis- 
gusted at the Yahoos,. — the degraded men, — upon whom 
Swift, in his sweeping misanthropy, has exhausted his bitter- 
ness and his filth. 

Stella and Vanessa. — While Swift's mysterious associ- 
ations with Stella and Vanessa have but little to do with the 
course of English Literature, they largely affect his person- 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 2/5 

ality, and no sketch of him would be complete without intro- 
ducing them to the reader. We cannot conjure up the tall, 
burly form, the heavy-browed, scowling, contemptuous face, 
the sharp blue eye, and the bushy black hair of the dean, 
without seeing on one side and the other the two pale, meek- 
eyed, devoted women, who watch his every look, shrink 
from his sudden bursts of wrath, receive for their infatua- 
tion a few fair words without sentiment, and earnestly crave 
a little love as a return for their whole hearts. It is a won- 
derful, touching, baffling story. 

Stella he had known and taught in her young maidenhood 
at Sir William Temple's. As has been said, she was called 
the daughter of his steward and housekeeper, but conjectures 
are rife that she was Sir WiUiam's own child. When Swift 
removed to Ireland, she came, at Swift's request, with a ma- 
tron friend, Mrs. Dingley, to live near him. Why he did 
not at once marry her, and why, at last, he married her se- 
cretly, in 1 716, are questions over which curious readers have 
puzzled themselves in vain, and upon which, in default of 
evidence, some perhaps uncharitable conclusions have been 
reached. The story of their association may be found in the 
Journal to Stella. 

With Miss Hester Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) he became ac- 
quainted in London, in 1712 : he was also her instructor; 
and when with her he seems to have forgotten his allegiance 
to Stella. Cadenus, as he calls himself, was too tender and 
fond : Vanessa became infatuated ; and when she heard of 
Swift's private marriage with Stella, she died of chagrin or 
of a broken heart. She had cancelled the will which she had 
made in Swift's favor, and left it in charge to her executors 
to publish their correspondence. Both sides of the history 
of this connection are fully displayed in the poem of Cade- 
nus and Vanessa, and in the Con-espondence of Swift and 
Vanessa. 



2^6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Character AND Death. — Pride overbearing and uncon- 
trollable, misanthropy, excessive dogmatism, a singular 
pleasure in giving others pain, were among his personal 
faults or misfortunes. He abused his companions and ser- 
vants ; he never forgave his sister for marrying a tradesman ; 
he could attract with winning words and repel with furious 
invective ; and he was always anxiously desiring the day of 
his death, and cursing that of his birth. His common fare- 
well was "Good-bye; I hope we may never meet again." 
There is a painful levity in his verses On the Death of Doc- 
tor Swift, in which he gives an epitome of his life : 

From Dublin soon to London spread, 
'T is told at court the dean is dead ! 
And Lady Suffolk, in the spleen, 
Runs laughing up to tell the queen : 
The queen, so gracious, mild, and good. 
Cries, " Is he gone ? it 's time he should." 

At last the end came. While a young man, he had suffered 
from a painful attack of vertigo, brought on by a surfeit of 
fruit; ''eating," he says, in a letter to Mrs. Howard, "an 
hundred golden pippins at a time." This had occasioned a 
deafness ; and both giddiness and deafness had recurred at 
intervals, and at last manifestly affected his mind. Once, 
when walking with some friends, he had pointed to an elm- 
tree, blasted by lightning, and had said, "I shall be like that 
tree: I shall die first at the top." And thus at last the doom 
fell. Struck on the brain, he lingered for nine years in that 
valley of spectral horrors, of whose only gates idiocy and 
madness are the hideous wardens. From this bondage he 
was released by death on the 19th of October, 1745. 

Many have called it a fearful retribution for his sins, and 
especially for his treatment of Stella and Vanessa. A far 
more reasonable and charitable verdict is that the evil in his 
conduct through life had its origin in congenital disorder; 



STEELE AND SWIFT. 27/ 

and in his days of apparent sanity, the character of his eccen- 
tric actions is to be palliated, if not entirely excused, on the 
plea of insanity. Additional force is given to this judgment 
by the fact that, when he died, it was found that he had left 
his money to found a hospital for the insane, illustrating the 

■line, — 

A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind. 

In that day of great classical scholar*. Swift will hardly 
rank among the most profound ; but he possessed a creative 
power, a ready and versatile fancy, a clear and pleasing but 
plain style. He has been unjustly accused -by Lady IMon- 
tagu of having stolen plot and humor from Cervantes and 
Rabelais : he drew from the same source as they ; and those 
suggestions which came to him from them owe all their merit 
to his application of them. As a critic, he was heartless and 
rude ; but as a polemic and a delineator of his age, he stands 
prominently forth as an historian, whose works alone would 
make us familiar with the period. 

Other Writers of the Age. 

Sh' William Temple, 1 628-1 698: he was a statesman and a political 
writer; ratlier a man of mark in his own day than of special interest to 
the pi-esent time. After having been engaged in several important diplo- 
matic affairs, he retired to his seat of JNIoor Park, and employed himself 
in study and with his pen. His Essays and Observations on Government 
are valuable as a clue to the history. In his controversy witli Bentley on 
the Epistles of Fhalaris, and the relative merits of ancient and m.odern 
authors, he was overmatched in scholarship. In a literaiy point of view, 
Temple deserves praise for the ease and beauty of his style. Dr. John- 
son says he "was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose." 
"What can be more pleasant,'' says Charles Lamb, "than the way in 
which the retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned in his delight- 
ful retreat at Shene? " He is perhaps better known in literaiy history 
as the early patron of Swift, than for his own works. 

Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727 : the chief glory of Newton is not con- 
nected with literary effort : he ranks among the most profound and orig- 
inal philosophers, and was one of the purest and most unselfish of men. 
24 



2/8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

The son of a farmer, he was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, after 
his fatlier's death, — a feeble, sickly child. The year of his birth was that 
in which Galileo died. At the age of fifteen he was employed on his 
mother's farm, but had already displayed such an ardor for learning that 
he was sent first to school and then to Cambridge, where he was soon 
conspicuous for his talents and his genius. In due time he was made a 
professor. His discoveries in astronomy, mechanics, and optics are of 
world-wide renown. The law of gravitation was established by him, 
and set forth in his paper De Motu Corporujn. His treatise on Fluxions 
prepared the way for that wonderful mathematical, labor-saving instru- 
ment — the differential calculus. In 1687 he published his Philosophies 
Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in which all his mathematical theories 
are propounded. In 1696 he was made Warden of the Mint, and in 
1699 Master of the Mint. Long a member of the Royal Society, he was 
its president for the last twenty-four years of his life. In 1688 he was 
elected member of parliament for the university of Cambridge. Of purely 
literary works he left two, entitled respectively. Observations tipon the 
Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St, John^ and a Chronology 
of Ancient Kingdoms Amended ; both of which are of little present value 
except as the curious remains of so great a man. 

Viscount Bolingbroke (Henry St. John), 1 678-1 75 1 : as an erratic states- 
man, a notorious free-thinker, a dissipated lord, a clever political writer, 
and an eloquent speaker, Lord Bolingbroke was a centre of attraction 
in his day, and demands observation in literary history. During the 
reign of Queen Anne he was a plotter in favor of the pretender, and 
when she died, he fled the realm to avoid impeachment for treason. 
In France he joined the pretender as Secretary of State, but was dis- 
missed for intrigue; and on being pardoned by the English king, he re- 
turned to England. His writings are brilliant but specious. His influ- 
ence was felt in the literary society he drew around him, — Swift, Pope, 
and others, — and, as has been already said, his opinions are to be 
found in that Essay on Man which Pope dedicated to him. In his 
meteoric political career he represents and typifies one phase of the 
time in which he lived. 

Geoige Berkeley, 1684-1753 : he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, 
and soon engaged in metaphysical controversy. In 1 724 he was made 
Dean of Derry, and in 1734, Bishop of Cloyne. A man of great philan- 
thropy, he set forth a scheme for the founding of the Bermudas College, 
to train missionaries for the colonies and to labor among the North 
American Indians. As a metaphysician, he was an absolute idealist. 
This is no place to discuss his theory. In the words of Dr. Reid, " He 



STEELE AND SWIFT, 



279 



maintains . . . that there is jio such thing as matter in the universe; 
that the sun and moon, earth and sea, our own bodies and those of our 
friends, are nothing but ideas in the minds of those wlio think of them, 
and that they have no existence when they are not objects of thought ; 
that all that is in the universe may be reduced to two categories, to wit, 
minds and ideas in the tnind.^^ The reader is referred, for a full discus- 
sion of this question, to Sir William Hamilton's Metaphysics. Berkeley's 
chief writings are : New Theory of Vision, Treatise Concerning the Prin- 
ciples of Human Knowledge, and Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. 
His name and memory are especially dear to the American people ; 
for, although his scheme of the trainmg- college failed, he lived for two 
years and a half in Newport, where his house still stands, and where 
one of his children is buried. He presented to Yale College his library 
and his estate in Rhode Island, and he wrote that beautiful poem with 
its kindly prophecy : 



Westward the course of empire takes its way : 

I'he four first acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; 

Time's noblest offspring is the last. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 



The New Age. 
Daniel Defoe. 
Robinson Crusoe. 
Richardson. 



Pamela, and Other Novels. 
Fielding. 
Joseph Andrews. 
Tom Jones. 



Its Moral. 
Smollett. 

Roderick Random. 
Peregrine Pickle. 



The New Age. 



WE have now reached a new topic in the course of Eng-' 
lish Literature — contemporaneous, indeed, with the 
subjects just named, but marked by new and distinct develop- 
ment. It was a period when numerous and distinctive forms 
appeared ; when genius began to segregate into schools and 
divisions ; when the progress of letters and the demands 
of popular curiosity gave rise to works which would have 
been impossible, because uncalled for, in any former period. 
English enterprise was extending commerce and scattering 
useful arts in all quarters of the globe, and thus giving new 
and rich materials to English letters. Clive was making him- 
self a lord in India ; Braddock was losing his army and his 
life in America. This spirit of English enterprise in foreign 
lands was evoking literary activity at home : there was no 
exploit of English valor, no extension of English dominion 
and influence, which did not find its literary reproduction. 
Thus, while it was an age of historical research, it was also 
that of actual delineations of curious novelties at home and 
abroad. 

Poetry was in a transition state ; it was taking its leave of 
the unhealthy satire and the technical wit of Queen Anne's 

280 



RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 28l 

reign, and attempting, on the one hand, the impostures of 
Macpherson and Chatterton, — to which we shall hereafter 
refer, — and, on the other, the restoration of the pastoral from 
the theatrical to the real, in Thomson's song of the Rolling 
Year, and Cowper's pleasant Task, so full of life and nature. 
Swallow-like, English poetry had hung about the eaves or 
skimmed the surface of town and court ; but now, like the 
lark, it soared into freer air — 

Coetusque vulgares et udam 
Spernit humum fugiente penna. 

In short, it was a day of general awakening. The intestine 
troubles excited by the Jacobites were brought to an end by 
the disaster of Culloden, in 1745. The German campaigns 
culminating at Minden, in 1759, opened a door to the study 
of German literature, and of the Teutonic dialects as elements 
of the English language. 

It is, therefore, not astonishing that in this period Litera- 
ture should begin to arrange itself into its present great divi- 
sions. As in an earlier age the drama had been born to 
cater to a popular taste, so in this, to satisfy the public de- 
mand, arose 'English prose fiction in its peculiar and enduring 
form. There had been grand and desultory works preceding 
til is, such as Robi?ison Crusoe, The Pilgrim'' s Progress, and 
Swift's inimitable story of Gulliver ; but the modern novel, 
unlike these, owes its origin to a general desire for delineations 
of private life and manners. " Show us ourselves ! " was the 
cry. 

A novel may be defined as a fictitious story of modern life 
describmg the management and mastery of the human passions, 
and especially the universal passion of love. Its power consists 
in the creation of ideal characters, which leave a real impress 
upon the reader's mind ; it must be a prose epic in that there 
is always a hero, or, at least, a heroine, generally both, and 
a dratna in its presentation of scenes and supplementary per- 
24* 



282 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

sonages. Thackeray calls his Vanity Fair a novel without a 
hero : it is impossible to conceive a novel without a heroine. 
There must also be a denouement, or consummation; in short, 
it must have, in the words of Aristotle, a beginning, middle, 
and ending, in logical connection and consecutive interest. 

Daniel Defoe. — Before, however, proceeding to consider 
the modern novel, we must make mention of one author, 
distinctly of his own age as a political pamphleteer, but v^-ho, 
in his chief and inimitable work, stands alone, without ante- 
cedent or consequent. Robinson Crusoe has had a host of 
imitators, but no rival. 

Daniel Foe, or, as he afterwards called himself, De Foe, 
was born in London, in the year 1661, He was the son of 
a butcher, but such was his early aptitude for learning, that 
he was educated to become a dissenting minister. His own 
views, however, were different : he became instead a political 
author, and wrote with great force against the government of 
James H. and the Established Church, and in favor of the 
dissenters. When the Duke of Monmouth landed to make 
his fatal campaign, Defoe joined his standard ; but does not 
seem to have suffered with the greater number of the duke's 
adherents. 

He was a warm supporter of William HI. ; and his famous 
poem. The Tnie-Born Englishman, was written in answer to 
an attack upon the king and the Dutch, called The Foreigners. 
Of his own poem he says, in the preface, '^ When I see the 
town full of lampoons and invectives against the Dutch, only 
because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and 
insulted by insolent pedants and ballad-making poets for era- 
ploying foreigners and being a foreigner himself, I confess 
myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own origi- 
nal, thereby to let them -see vv'hat a banter they put upon 
themselves, since — speaking of Englishmen ab o?'igine — we 
are really all foreigners ourselves^ " 



RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 283 

The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot, 

By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought ; 

Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, 

Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; 

Who, joined with Norman-French, compound the breed 

From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed. 

In 1702, just after the death of King William, Defoe pub- 
lished his severely ironical pamphlet, The Shortest Way with 
the Dissenters. Assuming the character of a High Church- 
man, he says: '' 'Tis vain to trifle in the matter. The light, 
foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. 
If the gallows instead of the compter, and the galleys instead 
of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there 
would not be so many sufferers." His irony was at first 
misunderstood : the High Churchmen hailed him as a cham- 
pion, and the Dissenters hated him as an enemy. But when 
his true meaning became apparent, a reward of ^^o was 
offered by the government for his discovery. His so-called 
''scandalous and seditious pamphlet" was burnt by the com- 
m.on hangman : he was tried, and sentenced to pay two hun- 
dred marks, to stand three times in the pillory, and to be 
imprisoned during the queen's pleasure. He bore his sen- 
tence bravely, and during his two years' residence in prison 
he published a periodical called The Review. In 1709 he 
wrote a History of the Union between England and Scotland. 

Robinson Crusoe. — But none of these things, nor all 
combined, would have given to Defoe that immortality which 
is his as the author of Robinson Crusoe. Of the ground- 
work of the story not much need be said. 

Alexander Selkirk, the sailing-master of an English privateer, 
was set ashore, in 1704, at his own request, on the uninhab- 
ited island Juan Fernandez, which Hes several hundred miles 
from the coast of Chili, in the Pacific Ocean. He was sup- 
plied with clothing and arms, and remained there- alone for 



284 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

four years and four months. It is supposed that his adventures 
suggested the work. It is also likely that Defoe had read the 
journal of Peter Serrano, who, in the sixteenth century, had 
been marooned in like manner on a desolate island lying off 
the mouth of the Oroonoque (Orinoco). The latter locality 
was adopted by Defoe. But it is not the fact or the adven- 
tures which give power to Robinson Crusoe. It is the manner 
of treating what might occur to any fancy, even the dullest. 
The charm consists in the simplicity and the verisimilitude of 
the narrative, the rare adaptation of the common man to his 
circumstances, his projects and failures, the birth of religion in 
his soul, his conflicting hopes and fears, his occasional despair. 
We see in him a brother, and a suffering one. We live his life 
on the island ; we share his terrible fear at the discovery of the 
footprint, his courage in destroying the cannibal savages and 
rescuing the victim. Where is there in fiction another man 
Friday ? From the beginning of his misfortunes until he is 
again sailing for England, after nearly thirty years of cap- 
tivity, he holds us spellbound by the reality, the simplicity, 
and the pathos of his narrative ; but, far beyond the tempo- 
rary illusion of the modern novel, everything remains real : 
the shipwrecked mariner spins his yarns in sailor fashion, and 
we believe and feel every word he says. The book, although 
wonderfully good throughout, is unequal : the prime interest 
only lasts until he is rescued, and ends with his embarkation 
for England. The remainder of his travels becomes, as a 
narrative, comparatively tiresome and tame ; and we feel, 
besides, that, after his unrivalled experience, he should have 
remained in England, ''the observed of all observers." Yet 
it must be said that we are indebted to his later journey in 
Spain and France, his adventures in the Eastern Seas, his 
caravan ride overland from China to Europe, for much which 
illustrates the manners and customs of navigation and travel 
in that day. 

Robinson Crusoe stands alone among English books, a per- 



RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 285 

ennial fountain of instruction and pleasure. It aids in edu- 
cating each new generation : children read it for its incident ; 
men to renew their youth ; literary scholars to discover what 
it teaches of its time and of its author's genius. Its influence 
continues unabated ; it incites boys to maritime adventure, 
and shows them how to use in emergency whatever they find 
at hand. It does more : it tends to reclaim the erring by its 
simple homilies ; it illustrates the ruder navigation of its day; 
shows us the habits and morals of the merchant marine, and 
the need and means of reforming what was so very bad. 

Defoe's style is clear, simple, and natural. He wrote sev- 
eral other works, of which few are now read. Among these 
are the Account of the Plague, The Life and Piracies of 
Captain Singleton, and The Fortuiies and Misfortunes of 
Moll Flanders. He died on the 24th of April, 1731. 

Richardson. — Samuel Richardson, who, notwithstanding 
the peculiar merits of Defoe, must be called the Father of 
Modern Prose Fiction, was born in Derbyshire, in 1689. The 
personal events of his life are few and uninteresting. A car- 
penter's son, he had but little schooling, and owed everything 
to his own exertions. Apprenticed to a printer in London, 
at the age of fifteen, he labored assiduously at his trade, and 
it rewarded him with fortune : he became, in turn, printer of 
the Journals of the House of Commons, Master of the Sta- 
tioners' Company, and Printer to the King. While young, 
he had been the confidant of three young women, and had 
written or corrected their love-letters for them. He seems 
to have had great fluency in letter-writing ; and being solic- 
ited by a publisher to write a series of familiar letters on the 
principal concerns of life, which might be used as models, — 
a sort of '' Easy Letter- Writer," — he began the task, but, 
changing his plan, he wrote a story in a series of letters. 
The first volume was published in 1741, and was no less a 
work th'an Pamela. The author was then fifty years old; 



286 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and he presents in this work a matured judgment concerning 
the people and customs of the day, — the printer's notions of 
the social condition of England, — shrewd, clever, and de- 
fective. 

Wearied as the world had been by what Sir Walter Scott 
calls the "huge folios of inanity " which had preceded him, 
the work was hailed with delight. There was a little affecta- 
tion ; but the sentiment was moral and natural. Ladies car- 
ried Pamela about in their rides and walks. Pope, near his 
end, said it was a better moral teacher than sermons : Sher- 
lock recommended it from the pulpit. 

Pamela, and Other Novels. — Pamela is represented as a 
poor servant-maid, but beautiful and chaste, whose honor 
resists the attack of her dissolute master, and whose modesty 
and virtue overcome his evil nature. Subdued and reclaimed 
by her chastity and her charms, he reforms, and marries her. 
Some pictures which are rather warmly colored and indelicate 
in our day were quite in keeping with the taste of that time, 
and gave greater effect to the moral lesson assigned to be 
taught. 

In his next work, Clarissa Haidowe, which appeared in 
1749, he has drawn the picture of a perfect woman preserving 
her purity amid seductive gayeties, and suffering sorrows to 
which those of the Virgin Martyr are light. We have, too, 
an excellent portraiture of a bold and wicked, but clever and 
gifted man — Lovelace. 

His third and last novel. Sir Charles Grandison, appeared 
in 1753. The hero. Sir Charles, is the model of a Christian 
gentleman; but is, perhaps, too faultless for popular appreci- 
ation. 

In his delineations of humbler natures, — country girls like 
Pamela, — Richardson is happiest : in his descriptions of 
high life he has failed from ignorance. He was not ac- 
quainted with the best society, and all his grandees are 



RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 28/ 

Stilted, artificial, and affected ; but even in this fault he is of 
value, for he shows us how men of his class at that time 
regarded the society of those above them. 

These works, which, notwithstanding their length, were 
devoured eagerly as soon as they appeared, are little read at 
present, and exist rather as historical interpreters of an age 
that is past, than as present light literature : they have been 
driven from our shelves by Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, and a 
host of charming novelists since his day. 

Richardson lived the admired of a circle of ladies, — to 
whose sex he had paid so noble a tribute, — the hero of tea- 
drmkings at his house on Parson's- Green ; his books gave 
him fame, but his shop — in the back office of which he wrote 
his novels, when not pressed by business — gave him money 
and its comforts. He died at the age of seventy-two, on the 
4th of July, 1 761. 

He was an unconscious actor in a great movement which 
had begun in France. The brilliant theories of Voltaire, 
Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Dalembert — containing much 
truth and many heresies — were felt in England, and had 
given a new impetus to English intellect ; indeed, it is not 
strange, when we come to consider, that while Richardson's 
works were praised in English pulpits, Voltaire and the 
French atheists declared that they saw in them an advance 
towards human perfectibility and self- redemption, of which, 
if true, Richardson himself was unconscious. From the 
amours of men and women of fashion, aided by intriguing 
maid-servants and lying valets, Richardson turned away to do 
honor to untitled merit, to exalt the humble, and to defy 
gilded vice. Whatever were the charms of rank, he has 
elevated our humanity; thus far, and thus far only, has he 
sympathized with the Frenchmen who attacked the corrup- 
tions of the age, but who assaulted also its faith and its rev- 
erence. 



288 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Henry Fielding. — The path of prose fiction, so hand- 
somely opened by Richardson, was immediately entered and 
pursued by a genius of higher order, and as unlike him as it 
was possible to be. Richardson still clung to romantic sen- 
timent, Fielding eschewed it ; Richardson was a teacher of 
morality, Fielding shielded immorality; Richardson described 
artificial manners in a society which he did not frequent, 
Fielding, in the words of Coleridge, "was like an open lawn 
on a breezy day in May;" Richardson was a plebeian, a 
carpenter's son, a successful printer; Fielding was a gentle- 
man, the son of General Fielding, and grandson of the Earl 
of Denbigh ; Richardson steadily rose, by his honest exer- 
tions, to independent fortune, Fielding passed from the high 
estate of his ancestors into poverty and loose company ; the 
one has given us mistaken views of high life, the other has 
been enabled, by his sad experience, to give us truthful pic- 
tures of every grade of English society in his day from the 
lord, the squire, and the fop to the thief-taker, the prostitute, 
and the thief. 

Henry Fielding was born on the 226. of April, 1707, at 
Sharphara Park, Somersetshire. While yet a young man, he 
l^d read Pamela; and to ridicule what he considered its 
prudery and over-righteousness, he hastily commenced his 
novel of Joseph Andrews. This Joseph is represented as the 
brother of Pamela, — a simple country lad, who comes to 
town and finds a place as Lady Booby's footman. As Pa- 
mela had resisted her master's seductions, he is called upon 
to oppose the vile attempts of his mistress upon his virtue. 

In that novel, as well as in its successors, Tom Jones and 
Amelia, Fielding has given us rare pictures of English life, 
and satires upon English institutions, which present the social 
history of England a century ago : in this view our sympa- 
thies are not lost upon purely ideal creations. 

In him, too, the French illiiminati claimed a co-laborer; 
and their influence is more distinctly seen than in Richard- 



RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 289 

son's works: great social problems are discussed almost in 
the manner of a Greek chorus ; mechanical forms of religion 
are denounced. .The French philosophers attacked errors so 
intertwined with truth, that the violent stabs at the former 
have cut the latter almost to death ; Richardson attacked the 
errors without injuring the truth : he is the champion of pu- 
rity. \i Joseph Andreivs was to ri\dl Pamela in chastity, To?n 
Jones was to be contrasted with both in the same particular. 

Tom Jones. — Fielding has received the highest commen- 
dations from literary men. Byron calls him the "prose Ho- 
mer of human nature j " and Gibbon, in noticing that the 
Lords of Denbigh were descended, like Charles V., from 
Rudolph of Hapsburg, says : " The successors of Charles V. 
may despise their brethren of England, but the romance of 
Tom Jones — that exquisite picture of human manners — will 
outlive the Palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of 
Austria." We cannot go so far; we quote the praise, but doubt 
the prophecy. The work is historically valuable, but techni- 
cally imperfect and unequal. The plot is rambling, without 
method : most of the scenes lie in the country or in obscure 
English towns ; the meetings are as theatrical as stage en- 
counters ; the episodes are 3,wkwardly introduced, and disfigure 
the unity; the classical introductions and invocations are absurd. 
His heroes are men of generous impulses but dissolute lives, 
and his women are either vile, or the puppets of circumstance. 

Its True Value. — What can redeem his works from such 
a category of condemnation ? Their rare portraiture of char- 
acter and their real glimpses of nature : they form an album 
of photographs of life as it was — odd, grotesque, but true. 
They have no mysterious Gothic castles like that of Otranto, 
nor enchanted forests like that of Mrs. Radcliffe. They present 
homely English life and people, — Partridge, barber, school- 
master,, and coward ; Mrs. Honor, the type of maid-servants, 
devoted to her mistress, and vet artful ; Squire Western, the 
25 T 



290 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

foul and drunken country gentleman ; Squire Allworth\, a no- 
ble specimen of human nature ; Far son Adams, who is regard- 
. ed by the critics as the best portrait among all his characters. 

And even if we can neither commend nor recommend he- 
roes like Tom JoJies, such young men really existed, and the 
likeness is speakingly drawn : we bear with his faults because 
of his reality. Perhaps our verdict may be best given in the 
words of Thackeray. ^' I am angry," he says, *' with Jones. 
Too much of the plum-cake and the rewards of life fall to 
that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia act- 
ually surrenders without a proper sense of decorum; the fond, 
foolish, palpitating little creature. 'Indeed, Mr. Jones,' she 
says, 'it rests with you to name the day.' . . . And yet 
many a young fellow, no better than Mr. Tliomas Jones, has 
carried by a coup-de-main the heart of many a kind girl who 
was a great deal too good for him." 

When Joseph Andrews appeared, and Richardson found 
that so profane a person as Fielding had dared to burlesque 
his Pamela, he was angry ; and his little tea-drinking coterie 
was warm in his defence ; but Fielding's party was then, and 
has remained, the stronger. 

In his novel of Amelia, we have a general autobiography of 
Fielding. Amelia, his wife, is lovely, chaste, and constant. 
Captain Booth — Fielding himself — is errant, guilty, gener- 
ous, and repentant. We have besides in it many varieties 
of English life, — lords, clergymen, officers; Vauxhall and the 
masquerade ; the sponging-house and its inmates, debtors 
and criminals, — all as Fielding saw and knew them. 

The condition of the clergy is more clearly set forth in 
Fielding's novels than in the pages of Echard, Oldham, 
Wood, Macaulay, or Churchill Babington. So changed was 
their estate since the Reformation, that few high-born youths, 
except tlie weak or lame, took holy orders. Many clergymen 
worked during the week. One, says South, was a cobbler on 
weekdays, and preached on Sundays. Wilmot says: "We 



RI-SE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 2gl 

are struck by the phenomenon of a learned man sitting down 
to prove, with the help of logic, that a priest or a chaplain in 
a family is not a servant." — Jeremy Collier: Essays on Pride 
and the Office of a Chaplain. 

Fielding drew them and their condition from the life. 
Parson Adams is the most excellent of men. His cassock is 
ten years old ; over it he dons a coarse white overcoat, and 
travels on foot to London to sell nine volumes of sermons, 
wherewithal to buy food for his family. . He engages the inn- 
keeper in serious talk ; he does desperate battle to defend a 
young woman who has fallen into the hands of ruffians on the 
highway ; and when he is arrested, his manuscript Eschylus 
is mistaken for a book of ciphers unfolding a dreadful plot 
against the government. This is a hit against the ignorance 
and want of education among the people ; for it is some time 
before some one in the company thinks he saw such characters 
many years ago when he was young, and that it may be Greek. 
The incident of Parson Trulliber mistaking his fellow-priest 
for a pork-merchant, on account of his coarse garments, is 
excellent, but will not bear abbreviation, xldams is splattered 
by the huge, overfed swine, and ejaculates, ^^ Nil habeo ciwi 
porcis ; I am a clergyman, sir, and am not come to buy 
hogs ! " The condition of a curate and the theology of the 
publican are set forth in the conversation between Parson 
Adams and the innkeeper. 

The works of Fielding may be justly accused of describing 
immoral scenes and using lewd language ; but even in this 
they are delineative of the manners and conversation of 
an age in which such men lived, such scenes occurred, such 
language was used. I liken the great realm of English prose 
fiction to some famous museum of art. The instructor of the 
young may carefully select what pictures to show them ; but 
the student of English literature moves through the rooms 
and galleries, gazing, judging, approving, condemning, com- 
paring. Genius may have soiled its canvas with what is pru- 



292 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

rient and vile ; lascivious groups may stand side by side with 
pictures of saints an-d madonnas. To leave the figure, it is 
wise counsel to read on principle, and, armed with principle, 
to accept and imitate the good, and to reject the evil. Con- 
' science gives the rule, and for every bane will give the 
antidote. 

Of this school and period, Fielding is the greatest figure. 
One word as to his career. Passing through all social con- 
ditions, — first a country gentleman, living on or rather 
squandering his first wife's little fortune in following the 
hounds and entertaining the county; then a playwright, vege- 
tating very seedily on the proceeds of his comedies; justice 
of the peace, and encountering, in his vocation, such charac- 
ters 2k.'5, Jonathan Wild ; drunken, licentious, unfaithful to his 
wife, but always — strange paradox of poor human nature — 
generous as the day ; mourning with bitter tears the loss of 
his first wife, and then marrying her faithful maid-servant, 
that they may mourn for her together, — he seems to have 
been a rare mechanism without a governor. "Poor Harry 
Fielding ! " And yet to this irregular, sinful character, we 
owe the inimitable portraitures of English life as it was, in 
Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia. 

Fielding's habits, acting upon a naturally weak constitu- 
tion, wore him out. He left England, and wandered to the 
English factory at Lisbon, where he died, in 1754, in the 
forty-eighth year of his age. 

ToBL^s George Smollett. — Smollett, the third in order 
and in rank of the novelists of his age, was born at Cardross, 
Dumbartonshire, in 1721, of a good family; but he had 
small means. After some schooling at Dumbarton and a 
university career at Glasgow, he was, from necessity, appren- 
ticed to a surgeon. But as his grandfather. Sir James Smol- 
lett, on whom he depended, died, he left his master, at the 
age of eighteen, and, taking in his pocket a manuscript play 



RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 293 

he had thus early written, — The Regicides, — he made his 
way to London, the El Dorado of all youths with literary 
aspirations. The play was not accepted ; but, through the 
knowledge obtained in the surgery, he received an appoint- 
ment as surgeon's mate, and went out with Admiral Vernon's 
fated expedition to Carthagena in that capacity, and thus 
acquired a knowledge of the sea and of sailors which he was 
to use with great effect in his later writings. For a time he 
remained in the West Indies, where he fell in love with Miss 
Anne Lascelles, whom he afterwards married. In 1746 he 
returned to London, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to 
practise medicine, he threw himself with great vigor into 
the field of literature. He was a man of strange and antag- 
onistic features, just and generous in theory, quarrelsome and 
overbearing in practice. From the year 1746 his pen seems 
to have been always busy. He first tried his hand on some 
satires, which gained for him numerous enemies; and in 1748 
he produced his first novel, Roderick Rando7?i, which, in 
spite of its indecency, the world at once acknowledged to be 
a work of genius : the verisimilitude was perfect ; every one 
recognized in the hero the type of many a young North 
countryman going out to seek his fortune. The variety is 
great, the scenes are more varied and real than those in 
Richardson and Fielding, the characters are numerous and 
vividly painted, and the keen sense of ridicule pervading the 
book makes it a broad jest from beginning to end. Histori- 
cally, his delineations are valuable ; for he describes a period 
in the annals of the British marine which has happily passed 
away, — a hard life in little stifling holds or forecastles, with, 
hard fare, — a base life, for the sailor, oppressed on ship- 
board, was the prey of vile women and land-sharks when on 
shore. What pictures of prostitution and indecency ! what 
obscenity of language ! what drunken infernal orgies ! We 
may shun the book as we would shun the company, and yet 
the one is the exact portraiture of the other. 

25 * 



294 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Roderick Random was followed, in 1751, by Peregrine 
Fickle, a book in similar taste, but the characters in which 
are even more striking. The forms of Commodore Trunnion, 
Lieutenant Hatchway, Pipes the boatswain, and Ap Morgan 
the choleric Welsh surgeon, are as familiar to us now as at the 
first. 

Smollett had now retired to Chelsea, where his facile pen 
was still hard at work. In 1753 appeared his Ferdinand 
Count Fathom, the portraiture of a complete villain, corres- 
ponding in character with Fielding's Jonathan Wild, but 
with a better moral. 

About this time he translated Don Quixote ; and although 
his version is still published, it is by no means true to the 
idiom of the language, nor to the higher purpose of Cervantes. 

Passing by his Complete History of AutheJitic and Entertain- 
ZJig Voyages, we come to his History of England f'om the 
Desce7it of Julius CcEsar to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 
1748. It is not a profound work; but it is so currently 
written, that, in lieu of better, the latter portion was taken to 
supplement Hume ; as a work of less merit than either, that 
of Bissett was added in the later editions to supplement Smol- 
lett and Hume. For this history he is said to have received 

;£20C0. 

In 1762 he issued The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves^ 
who, with his attendant, Captai?i Crowe, goes forth, in the 
style of Don Quixote and Sancho, to do the world. Smol- 
lett's forte was in the broadly humorous, and this is all that 
redeems this work from utter absurdity. 

Humphrey Clinker. — His last work of any importance, 
and perhaps his best, is The Expedition of Humphrey Cli7iker, 
described in a series of letters -descriptive of this amusing 
imaginative journey. Mrs. Winifred, Tabitha, and, best of 
all, Lismahago, are rare characters, and in all respects, except 
its vulgarity, it was the prototype of Hood's exquisite Up the 
Rhine, 



RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION. 295 

From the year 1756, Smollett edited, at intervals, various 
periodicals, and wrote what he thought very good poetry, 
now forgotten, — an Ode to Independence ^ after the Greek 
manner of strophe and antistrophe, not wanting in a noble 
spirit ; and Tlie Tears of Scotland, written on the occasion 
of the Duke of Cumberland's barbarities, in 1746, after the 
battle of Culloden : 

Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn 
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn! 
Thy sons, for valor long renowned, 
Lie slaughtered on thy native ground. 

Smollett died abroad on the 21st of October, 1771. His 
health entirely broken, he had gone to Italy, and taken a 
cottage near Leghorn : a slight resuscitation was the conse- 
quence, and he had something in prospect to live for : he was 
the heir-at-law to the estate of Bonhill, worth ;^iooo per 
annum ; but the remorseless archer would not wait for his 
fortune. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 



The Subjective School. 
Sterne — Sermons. 
Tristram Shandy, 



Sentimental Journey. 
Oliver Goldsmith. 
Poems — The Vicar. 



Histories, and Other Works. 

Mackenzie. 

The Man of Feeling. 



The Subjective School. 

IN the same age, and inspired by similar influences, there 
sprang up a widely-different school of novelists, which 
has been variously named as the Sentimental and the Subjec- 
tive School. Richardson and Fielding depicted what they 
saw around them objectively, rather than the impressions 
made upon their individual sensitiveness. Both Sterne and 
Goldsmith were eminently subjective. They stand as a trans- 
parent medium between their works and the reader. The 
medium through which we see Tristram Shandy is a double 
lens, — one part of which is the distorted mind of the author, 
and the other the nondescript philosophy which he pilfered 
from Rabelais and Burton. The glass through which the 
Vicar of Wakefield is shown us is the good-nature and loving 
heart of Goldsmith, which brighten and gladden every crea- 
tion of his pen. Thus it is that two men, otherwise essen- 
tially unlike, appear together as representatives of a school 
which was at once sentimental and subjective. 

Sterne. — Lawrence Sterne was the son of an officer in the 
British army, and was born, in 1713, at Clonmel, in Ireland, 
where his father was stationed. 

His father died not long afterwards, at Gibraltar, from the 

296 



STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 29/ 

effect of a wound which he had received in a duel ; and it is 
indicative of the code of honor in that day, that the duel was 
about a goose at the mess-table ! What little Lawrence learned 
in his brief military experience was put to good use afterwards 
in his army reminiscences and portraitures in Tristram Shandy. 
No doubt My Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim are sketches 
from his early recollections. Aided by his mother's rela- 
tions, he studied at Cambridge, and afterwards, without an 
inward call, but in accordance with the custom of the day, 
he entered into holy orders, and was presented to a living, 
of which he stood very much in need. 

His Sermons. — With no spirit for parochial work, it must 
be said that he published very forcible and devout sermons, 
and set before his people and the English world a pious stand- 
ard of life, by which, however, he did not choose to meas- 
ure his own : he preached, but did not practise. In a letter 
to Mr. Foley, he says: "I have made a good campaign in 
the field of the literati : . . . two volumes of sermons which 
I shall print very soon will bring me a considerable sum. . . . 
'Tis but a crown for sixteen sermons — dog cheap; but I am 
in quest of honor, not money." 

These discourses abound in excellent instruction and in 
pithy expressions; but it is painful to see how often his 
pointed rebukes are undesignedly aimed at his own conduct. 
In one of them he says : " When such a man tells you that a 
thing goes against his conscience, always believe he means 
exactly the same thing as when he tells you it goes against 
his stomach — a present want of appetite being generally the 
true cause of both." In his discourse on The Forgiveness of 
Injuries, v/e have the following striking sentiment: ^'The 
brave only know how to forgive : it is the most refined and. 
generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at. Cow- 
ards have done good and kind actions ; cowards have even 
fought^ nay, sometimes even conquered ; but a coward never 



298 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

forgave." All readers of Tristram Shandy will recall his 
sermon on the text, ''For we trust we have a good con- 
science," so affecting to Corporal Trim and so overwhelm- 
ing to Dr. Slop. 

But if his sermons are so pious and good, we look in vain 
into his entertaining Letters for a corresponding piety in his 
life. They are witty, jolly, occasionally licentious. They 
touch and adorn every topic except religion ; and so it may 
be feared that all his religion was written, printed, bound, 
and sold by subscription, in those famous sermons, sixteen for 
a crown — "dog cheap ! " 

Tristram Shandy. — In 1759 appeared the first part of 
Tristram Shandy — a strange, desultory work, in which many 
of the curious bits of philosophy are taken from Montaigne, 
Burton, Rabelais, and others ; but which has, besides, great 
originality in the handling and in the portraiture of charac- 
ters. Much of what Sterne borrowed from these writers passed 
for his own in that day, when there were comparatively few 
readers of the authors mentioned. As to the charge of pla- 
giarism, we may say that Sterne's hero is like the Gargantua 
of Rabelais in many particulars; but he is a man instead of a 
monster ; while the chapter on Hobby-Horses is a reproduc- 
tion, in a new form of crystallization, of Gargantua' s wooden 
horses. 

So, too, the entire theological cast of Tristram Shandy is 
that of the sixteenth century; — questions before the Sorbonne, 
the use of excommunication, and the like. Dr. Slop, the 
Roman Catholic surgeon of the family, is but a weak mouth- 
piece of his Church in the polemics of the story ; for Sterne 
was a violent opponent of the Church of Rome in story as 
well as in sermon ; and Obadiah, the stupid man-servant, is 
the lay figure who receives the curses which Dr. Slop reads, — 
''cursed in house and stable, garden and field and highway, 
in path or in wood, in the water or in the church." Whether 



STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 299 

the doctor was in earnest or not, Obadiah paid him fully by 
upsettmg him and his pony with the coach-horse. 

But in spite of the resemblance to Rabelais and a former 
age, it must be allowed that Tristram Shandy contams many 
of the richest pictures and fairest characters of the age in which 
it was written. Rural England is truthfully presented, and 
the political cast of the day is shown in his references to the 
war in Flanders. Among the sterling original portraits are 
those of Mr. Shandy, the country gentleman, controversial and 
consequential ; Mrs. Shandy, the nonentity, — the Amelia 
Osborne and Mrs. Nickleby of her day ; Yorick, the luke- 
warm, time-serving priest — Sterne himself: and these are 
only supplementary characters. 

The sieges of towns in the Low Countries, then going on, are 
pleasantly connected with that most exquisite of characters, 
my Uncle Toby, who has a fortification in his garden, — sentry- 
box, cannon, and all, — and who follows the great movement 
on this petty scale from day to day, as the bulletins come in 
from the seat of war. 

The Widow Wadman, with her artless wiles, and the 
" something in her eye," makes my Uncle Toby — who pro- 
tests he can see nothing in the white — look, not without peril, 
"with might and main into the pupil." Ah, that sentry-box 
and the widow's tactics might have conquered many a more 
wary man than my Uncle Toby ! and yet my Uncle Toby 
escaped. 

Now, all these are real English characters, sketched from 
life by the hand of genius, and they become our friends and 
acquaintances forever. It seems as though Sterne, after a long 
and close study of Rabelais and Burton, had fancied that, 
with their aid, he might write a money-making book; but 
his own genius, rising superior to the plagiarism, took the 
project out of his venal hands ; and from the antique learning 
and the incongruities which he had heaped together, bright and 
beautiful forms sprang forth like genii from the mine, to subsi- 
dize the tears and laughter of all future time. What an exquis- 



300 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

ite creation is my Uncle Toby ! — a soldier in the van of battle, 
a man of honor and high tone in every-day life, a kind bro- 
ther, a good master to Corporal Trim, simple as a child, be- 
nevolent as an angel. ^' Go, poor devil," quoth he to the 
fly which buzzed about his nose all dinner-time, ''get thee 
gone ; why should I hurt thee ? This world is surely wide 
enough to hold both thee and me ! " 

And as for Corporal Trim, he is a host in himself. There 
is in the English literary portrait-gallery no other Uncle Toby, 
there is no other Corporal Trim. Hazlitt has not exaggerated 
in saying that the Story of Le Fevre is perhaps the finest in the 
English language My Uncle Toby's conduct to the dying 
officer is the perfection of loving-kindness and charity. 

The Sentimental Journey. — Sterne's Sentimental Jour- 
ney, although charmingly written, — and this is said in spite 
of the preference of such a critic as Horace Walpole, — will 
not compare with Tristram Shandy : it is left unfinished, and 
is constantly suggestive of licentiousness. 

Sterne's English is excellent and idioraatic;, and has com- 
mended his works to the ordinary reader, who shrinks from 
the hyperlatinism of the time represented so strongly by Dr. 
Johnson and his followers. His wit, if sometimes artificial, 
is always acute; his sentiment is entirely artificial ; "he is 
always protruding his sensibility, trying to play upon you as 
upon an instrument ; more concerned that you should ac- 
knowledge his power than have any depth of feeling." 
Thackeray, whose opinion is just quoted, calls him ''a great 
jester, not a great humorist." He had lived a careless, self- 
indulgent life, and was no honor to his profession. His death 
was like a retribution. In a mean lodging, with no friends 
but his bookseller, he died suddenly from hemorrhage. His 
funeral was hasty, and only attended by two persons; his 
burial was in an obscure graveyard ; and his body was taken 
up by corpse-snatchers for the dissecting-room of the profes- 
sor of anatomy at Cambridge, — alas, poor Yorick ! 



STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 3OI 

Oliver Goldsmith. — We have placed Goldsmith in imme- 
diate connection with Sterne as, like him, of the Subjective 
School, in his story of the Vicar of Wakefield dJvA his numerous 
biographical and prose sketches; but he belongs to more than 
one literary school of his period. He was a poet, an essayist, a 
dramatist, and an historian \ a writer who, in the words of his 
epitaph, — written by Dr. Johnson, and with no extravagant 
eulogium, — touched all subjects, and touched none that he 
did not adorn, — nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. His life 
was a strange melodrama, so varied with laughter and tears, 
so checkered with fame and misfortune, so resounding with 
songs pathetic and comic, that, were he an unknown hero, his 
adventures would be read with pleasure by all persons of sen- 
sibility. There is no better illustration of the stcbjective in 
literature. It is the man who is presented to us in his Avorks, 
and who can no more be disjoined from them than the light 
from the vase, the beauties of which it discloses. As an 
essayist, he was of the school of Addison and Steele ; but he 
has more ease of style and more humor than his teachers. 
As a dramatist, he had many and superior competitors in his 
own vein ; and yet his plays still occupy the stage. As an his- 
torian, he was fluent but superficial ; and yet the charm of his 
style and the easy flow of his narrative, have given his books 
currency as manuals of instruction. And although as a writer 
of fiction, or of truth gracefully veiled in the garments of 
fiction, he stands unrivalled in his beautifuland touching 
story of the incorruptible Vicar ^ yet this is his only complete 
story, and presents but one side of his literary character. 
Considering him first as a poet, we shall find that he is one 
of the Transition School, bat that he has a beautiful origin- 
ality : his poems appeal not to the initiated alone, but to hu- 
man nature in all its conditions and guises ; they are elevated 
and harmonious enough for the most fastidious taste, and sim- 
ple and artless enough to please the rustic and the child. To 
say that' he is the most popular writer in the v/hole course of 
26 



302 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

English Literature thus far, is hardly to overstate his claims; 
and the principal reason is that, with a blundering and im- 
provident nature, a want of dignity, a lack of coherence, he 
had a great heart, alive to human suffering; he was generous 
to a fault, true to the right, and ever seeking, if constantly 
failing, to direct and improve his own life, and these good 
characteristics are everywhere manifest in his works. A brief 
recital of the principal events in his career will throw light upon 
his works, and will do the best justice to his peculiar character. 
Oliver Goldsmith was born at the little village of Pallas, in 
Ireland, where his father was a poor curate, on the loth of 
November, 1728. There were nine children, of whom he 
was the fifth. His father afterwards moved to Lissoy, which 
the poet described, in his Deserted Village, as 

Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, 

Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain. 

As his father v/as entirely unable to educate so numerous 
a family. Goldsmith owed his education partly to his uncle, 
the Rev. Thomas Contarini, and in part to his brother, the 
Rev. Henry Goldsmith, whom he cherished with the sincerest 
affection. An attack of the small-pox while he was a boy 
marked his face, and he was to most persons an unpreposses- 
sing child. He was ill-treated at school by larger boys, and 
afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a 
sizar, by his tutor. He was idle, careless, and improvident: 
he left college without permission, but was taken back by his 
brother, and was finally graduated with a bachelor's degree, 
in 1749. His later professional studies were spasmodic and 
desultory : he tried law and medicine, and more than once 
gained a scanty support by teaching. Seized with a rambling 
spirit, he went to the Continent, and visited Holland, France, 
Germany, Switzerland, and Italy ; sometimes gaining a scanty 
livelihood by teaching English, and sometimes wandering 
without money, depending upon his flute to win a supper and 



STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 3O3 

bed from the rustics who lived on the highway. He obtained, 
it is said, the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Padua; and 
on his return to England, he went before a board of exam- 
iners to obtain the position of surgeon's mate in the army or 
navy. He was at this time so poor that he was obliged to 
borrow a suit of clothes to make a proper appearance before 
the examiners. He failed in his examination, and then, in 
despair, he pawned the borrowed clothes, to the great anger 
of the publisher who had lent them. This failure in his med- 
ical examination, unfortunate as it then seemed, secured him 
to literature. From that time his pen was constantly busy for 
the reviews and magazines. His first work was An Inquiry 
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, ^^■hich, a.t 
least, prepared the way for his future efforts. This appeared 
in 1759, and is characterized by general knowledge and polish 
of style. 

His Poems. — In 1764 he published The Traveller, a 
moralizing poem upon the condition of the people under the 
European governments. It was at once and entirely success- 
ful ; philosophical, elegant, and harmonious, it is pitched in 
a key suited to the capacity of the world at large ; and as, in 
the general comparison of nations, he found abundant reason 
for lauding England, it was esteemed patriotic, and was on 
that account popular. Tvlany of its lines have been constantly 
quoted since. 

In 1770 appeared his Deserted Village, which was even 
more popular than The Traveller; nor has this popularity 
flagged from that time dovrn to the present day. It is full of 
exquisite pictures of rural life and manners. It is what it 
claims to be, — not an attempt at high art or epic, but a gal- 
lery of cabinet pictures of rare finish and detail, painted by 
the poet's heart and appealing to the sensibility of every 
reader. The world knows it by heart, — the portraiture of 
the village schoolmaster and his school ; the beautiful picture 
of the country parson ; 



304 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

A man he was to all the country dear, 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year. 

This latter is a worthy companion-piece to Chaucer's ''poor 
persoune," and is, besides, a filial tribute to Goldsmith's 
father. So real are the characters and scenes, that the poem 
has been a popular subject for the artist. If in The Traveller 
he has been philosophical and didactic, in the Deserted Vil- 
lage he is only descriptive and tender. In no work is there 
a finer spirit of true charity, the love of man for God's 
sake, — like God himself, "no respecter of persons." 

While in form and versification he is like Pope and the 
Artificial School, he has the sensibility to nature of Thomson, 
and the simplicity of feeling and thought of Wordsworth ; 
and thus he stands between the two great poetic periods, 
partaking of the better nature of both. 

The Vicar of Wakefield. — Between the appearance of 
these two poems, in 1766, came forth that nonpareil of charm- 
ing stories, The Vicar of Wakefield. It is so well known 
that we need not enter into an analysis of it. It is the story 
of a good vicar, of like passions with ourselves ; not wanthig 
in vanity and impetuosity, but shining in his Christian virtue 
like a star in the midst of accumulating misfortunes, — a man 
of immaculate honor and undying faith, preaching to his 
fellow-prisoners in the jail, surveying death without fear, and 
at last, like Job, restored to happiness, and yet maintaining 
his humility. It does not seem to have been constructed 
according to artificial rules, but rather to have been told ex- 
temporaneously, without effort and without ambition ; and 
while this very fact has been the cause of some artistic faults 
and some improbabilities, it has also given it a peculiar charm, 
by contrast with such purely artificial constructions as the 
Rasselas of Johnson. 

So doubtful was the publisher, who had bought the manu- 
script for ^60, that he held it back for two years, until the 



STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 305 

name of the author had become known through The Traveller^ 
and was thus a guarantee for its success. The Vicar of Wake- 
field has also an additional value in its delineation of manners, 
persons, and conditions in that day, and in its strictures upon 
the English penal law, in such terms and with such sugges- 
tions as seem a prophecy of the changes which have since 
taken place. 

Histories, and Other Works. — Of Goldsmith's various 
histories it may be said that they are of value for the clear, 
if superficial, presentation of facts, and for their charm of 
style. 

The best is, without doubt, The History of England ; but 
the Histories of Greece and Ronie^ re-edited, are still used 
as text-books in many schools. The Vicar has been trans- 
lated into most of the modern languages, and imitated by 
many writers since. 

As an essayist, Goldsmith has been a great enricher of 
English history. His Chinese letters — for the idea of which 
he was indebted to the Lettres Fersanes of Montesquieu — 
describe England in his day with the same vraisemblance 
which we have noticed in The Spectator. These were after- 
wards collected and published in a volume entitled The Citi- 
zen of the World. And besides the pleasure of biography, 
and the humor of the presentment, his Life of Beau Nash 
introduces us to Bath and its frequenters with historical power. 
The life at the Spring is one and a very valuable phase of 
English society. 

As a dramatist, he was more than equalled by Sheridan ; 
but his two plays. The Good-Natured Man and She Stoops to 
Conquer, are still favorites upon the stage. 

The irregularities of Goldsmith's private life seem to have 
been rather defects in his character than intentional wrong- 
doings. Generous to a fault, squandering without thought 
what was due to his creditors, losing at play, he lived in con- 
26* U 



306 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

tinual pecuniary embarrassment, and died unhappy, with a 
debt of ;^iooo, tlie existence of which led Jolmson to ejac- 
ulate, ''Was ever poet so trusted before?" He lived a 
bachelor ; and the conclusion seems forced upon us that had 
he married a woman who could have controlled him, he 
would have been a happier and more respectable man, but 
perhaps have done less for literature than he did. 

While Goldsmith was a type and presenter of his age, and 
while he took no high flights in the intellectual realms, he so 
handled what the age presented that he must be allowed the 
claim of originality, both in his poems and in the Vicar ; 
and he has had, even to the present day, hosts of imitators. 
Poems on college gala-days v»xre for a long time faint reflec- 
tions of his Travelle?', and simple, causal stories of quiet 
life are the teeming progeny of the Vicar, in spite of the 
Whistonian controversy, and the epitaph of his living wife. 

A few of his ballads and songs display great lyric power, 
but the most of his poetry is not lyric j it is rather a blending 
of the pastoral and epic with rare success. His minor poems 
are few, but favorites. Among these is the beautiful ballad 
entitled Edwin and Angelina, or The Hermit, which first 
appeared in The Vicar of Wakefield, but which has since been 
printed separately among his poems. Of its kind and class 
it has no superior. Retaliation is a humorous epitaph upon 
his friends and co-literati, hitting off their characteristics with 
truth and point ; and The Haunch of Venison — upon which 
he did not dine — is an amusing incident which might have 
happened to any Londoner like himself, but which no one 
could have related so well as he. 

He died in 1774, at the age of forty-five; but his fame — 
his better life — is more vigorous than ever. Washington 
Irving, whose writings are similar in style to those of Gold- 
smith, has extended and perpetuated his reputation in America 
by writing his Biography ; a charming work, many touches 
of which seem almost autobiographical, as displaying the 
resemblance between the writer and his subject. 



STERNE, GOLDSMITH, AND MACKENZIE. 30/ 

Mackenzie. — From Sterne and Goldsmith we pass to 
Mackenzie, who, if not a conscious imitator of the former, 
is, at least, unconsciously formed upon the model of Sterne, 
without his genius, but also without his coarseness : in the 
management of his narrative, he is a medium between Sterne 
and Walter Scott; indeed, from his long life, he saw the 
period of both these authors, and his writings partake of the 
characteristics of both. 

Henry Mackenzie was born at Edinburgh, in August, 1745, 
and lived until 1831, to the ripe age of eighty-six. He was 
educated at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards 
studied law. He wrote some strong political pamphlets in 
favor of the Pitt government, for which he was rewarded 
with the office of comptroller of the taxes, which he held to 
the day of his death. 



The Man of Feeling. — In 1771 the world was equally 
astonished and delighted by the appearance of his first novel, 
The Man of Feeling, In this there are manifest tokens of 
his debt to Sterne's Sejttiniental Journey, in the journey of 
Harley, in the story of the beggar and his dog, and in some- 
what of the same forced sensibility in the account of Harley's 
death. 

In 1773 appeared his Man of the World, which was in 
some sort a sequel to the Man of Feeling, but which wearies 
by the monotony of the plot. 

In 1777 he published Julia de Roubigne, which, in the 
opinion of many, shares the palm with his first novel : the 
plot is more varied than that of the second, and the language 
is exceedingly harmonious — elegiac prose. The story is 
plaintive and painful : virtue is extolled, but made to suffer, 
in a domestic tragedy, which all readers would be glad to see 
ending differently. 

At different times Mackenzie edited The Mirror and The 
Lounger, and he has been called the restorer of the Essay. 



308 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

His story of the venerable La Roche^ contributed to The 
Mirror, is perhaps the best specimen of his powers as a sen- 
timentalist : it portrays the influence of Christianity, as exhib- 
ited in the very face of infidelity, to support the soul in the 
sorest of trials — ■ the death of an only and peerless daughter. 

His contributions to the above-named periodicals were very 
numerous and popular. 

The name of his first novel was applied to himself as a 
man. He was known as the ma7i of feeling to the whole 
community. This was a misnomer: he was kind and affable; 
his evening parties were delightful ; but he had nothing of 
the pathetic or sentimental about him. On the contrary, he 
was humorous, practical, and worldly-wise ; very fond of 
field sports and athletic exercises. His sentiment — which has 
been variously criticized, by some as the perfection of moral 
pathos, and by others as lackadaisical and canting — may be 
said to have sprung rather from his observations of life and 
manners than to have welled spontaneously from any source 
within his own heart. 

Sterne and Goldsmith will be read as long as the English 
language lasts, and their representative characters will be 
quoted as models and standards everywhere : Mackenzie is 
fast falling into an oblivion from which he will only be resusci- 
tated by the historian of English Literature. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



THE HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 



The Sceptical Age. 
David Hume. 
History of England. 



Metaphysics. 
Essay on Miracles. 
Robertson. 



The Sceptical Age. 



Histories. 

Gibbon. 

The Decline and Fall, 



HISTORY presents itself to the student in two forms : 
The first is chronicle, or a simple relation of facts and 
statistics; and the 's^^cox^A, philosophical history, in which we 
use these facts and statistics in the consideration of cause and 
effect, and endeavor to extract a moral from the actions and 
events recorded. From pregnant causes the philosophic 
historian traces, at long distances, the important results ; or, 
conversely, from the present condition of things — the good 
and evil around him — he runs back, sometimes remotely, to 
the causes from which they have sprung. Chronicle is very 
pleasing to read, and the reader may be, to some extent, his 
own philosopher ; but the importance of history as a study is 
found in its philosophy. 

As far down as the eighteenth century, almost everything in 
history partakes of the nature of chronicle. In that century, 
in obedience to the law of human progress, there sprang up 
in England and on the Continent the men who first made 
chronicle material for philosophy, and used philosophy to 
teach by example what to imitate and what to shun. 

What were the circumstances which led, in the eighteenth 
century, to the simultaneous appearance of Hume, Gibbon, 
and Robertson, as the originators of a new school of history ? 

309 



310 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Some of them have been already mentioned in treating of 
the antiquarian age. We have endeavored to show how the 
Enghsh hterati — novelists, essayists, and poets — have been 
in part unconscious historians. It will also appear that the 
professed historians themselves have been, in a great measure, 
the creatures of English history. The fifteeiith century was 
the period when the revival of letters took place, and a great 
spur was given to mental activity; but the world, like a child, 
was again learning rudiments, and finding out what it wag, and 
what it possessed at that present time : it received the new 
classical culture presented to it at the fall of the lower empire, 
and was content to learn the existing, without endeavoring to 
create the new, or even to recompose the scattered fragments 
of the past. The eighteenth century saw a new revival : the 
world had become a man ; great progress was reported in 
arts, in inventions, and in discoveries ; science began to labor 
at the arduous but important task of classification; new the- 
ories of government and laws were propounded ; the past 
was consulted that its experience might be applied ; the par- 
tisan chronicles needed to be united and compared that truth 
might be elicited; the philosophic historian was required, and 
the people were ready to learn, and to criticize, what he pro- 
duced. 

I have ventured to call this the Sceptical Age. It had 
other characteristics : this was one. We use the word sceptical 
in its etymological sense : it was an age of inquiry, of doubt to 
be resolved. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, D'Alembert, 
and Diderot had founded a new school of universal inquiry, 
and from their bold investigations and startling theories sprang 
the society of the ilhuninati, and the race of thinkers. They 
went too far : they stabbed the truth as it lay in the grasp of 
error. From thinkers they became free-thinkers : from phi- 
losophers they became infidels, and some of them atheists. 
This was the age which produced '' the triumvirate of British 
historians who," in the words of Montgomery, '^exemplified 



HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 311 

in their very dissimilar styles the triple contrast of simplicity, 
elegance, and splendor." 

Imbued with this spirit of the time, Hume undertook to write 
a History of England, which, \vith all its errors and faults, still 
ranks among the best efforts of English historians. Like the 
French philosophers, Hume was an infidel, and his scepticism 
appears in his writings ; but, unlike them — for they were stanch 
reformers in government as well as infidels in faith — he who 
was an infidel was also an aristocrat in sentiment, and a con- 
sistent Tory his life long. In his history, with all the arti- 
fices of a philosopher, he takes the Jacobite side in the civil 



Hume. — David Hume was born in Edinburgh on the 26th 
of April (O. S.), 1711. His life was without many vicissi- 
tudes of interest, but his efforts to achieve an enduring repu- 
tation on the most solid grounds, mark him as a notable 
example of patient industry, study, and economy. He led a 
studious, systematic, and consistent life. 

Although of good family, — being a descendant of the Earl 
of Home, — he was in poor circumstances, and after some 
study of the law, and some unsuccessful literary ventures, he 
was obliged to seek employment as a means of livelihood. 
Thus he became tutor or keeper to the young Marquis of 
Annandale, who was insane. Abandoning this position in 
disgust, he was appointed secretary to General St. Clair in 
various embassies, — to Paris, Vienna, and Turin; everywhere 
hoarding his pay, until he became independent, *' though," 
he says, ''most of my friends were inclined to smile when I 
said so ; in short, I was master of a thousand pounds. ' ' 

His earliest work was a Treatise on Human Nature, pub- 
lished in 1738, which met with no success. Nothing discour- 
aged thereat, in 1741 he issued a volume oi Essays Moral 
and Political, the success of which emboldened him to publish, 
in 1748, his Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding. 



312 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

These and other works were preparing his pen for its greater 
task, the material for which he was soon to find. 

In 1752 he was appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advo- 
cates, not for the emolument, but with the real purpose of 
having entire control of the books and material in the library; 
and then he determined to write the History of England. 

History of England. — He began with the accession of 
the Stuarts, in 1603, the period v^^hen the popular element, so 
long kept tranquil by the power and sex of Queen Elizabeth, 
was ready first to break out into open assertion. Hume's self- 
deception must have been rudely discovered to him ; for he 
tells us, in an autobiography fortunately preserved, that he 
expected so dispassionately to steer clear of all existent par- 
ties, or, rather, to be so just to all, that he should gain uni- 
versal approbation. "Miserable," he adds, ''was my disap- 
pointment. I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disappro- 
bation, and even detestation. English, Scotch, Irish, Whig 
and Tory, churchman and sectary, free-thinker and religion- 
ist, patriot and courtier, united, in their rage, against the man 
who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of 
Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." How far, too, this was 
ignorant invective, may be judged from the fact that in twelve 
months only forty-five copies of his work were sold. 

However, he patiently continued his labor. The first volume, 
containing the reigns of James I. and Charles L, had been issued 
in 1754; his second, published in 1756, and containing the later 
history of the Commonwealth, of Charles II., and James II., 
and concluding with the revolution of 1688, was received with 
more favor, and " helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother." 
Then he worked backward: in 1759 he produced the reigns 
of the house of Tudor; and in 1761, the earlier history, com- 
pleting his work, from the earliest times to 1688. The tide had 
now turned in his favor ; the sales were large, and his pecu- 
niary rewards greater than any historian had yet received. 



HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 3I3 

The Tory character of his work is very decided : he not 
only sheds a generous tear for the fate of Charles I., but con- 
ceals or glosses the villanies of Stuarts far worse than Charles. 
The liberties of England consist, in his eyes, of wise conces- 
sions made by the sovereign, rather than as the inalienable 
birthright of the English man. 

He has also been charged with want of industry and hon- 
esty in the use of his materials — taking things at second-hand, 
without consulting original authorities which were within his 
reach, and thus falling into many mistakes, while placing in 
his marginal notes the names of the original authors. This 
chaVge is particularly just with reference to the Anglo-Saxon 
period, since so picturesquely described by Sharon Turner, 

The first in order of the philosophical historians, he is 
rather a collector of facts than a skilful diviner with them. 
His style is sonorous and fluent, but not idiomatic. Dr. John- 
son said, ''His style is not English; the structure of his sen- 
tences is French," — an opinion concurred in by the eminent 
critic, Lord Jeffrey. 

But whatever the criticism, the History of Hume is a great 
work. He did what was never done before. For a long 
time his work stood alone ; and even now it has the charm 
of a clear, connected narrative, which is still largely con- 
sulted by many who are forewarned of its errors and faults. 
And however unidiomatic his style, it is very graceful and 
flowing, and lends a peculiar charm to his narrative. 

Metaphysics. — Of Hume as a philosopher, we need not here 
say much. He was acute, intelligent, and subtle ; he was, in 
metaphysical language, '*a sceptical nihilist." And here a 
distinction must be made between his religious tenets and his 
philosophical views, — a distinction so happily stated by Sir 
William Hamilton, that we present it in his words: '' Though 
decidedly opposed to one and all of Hume's theological con- 
clusions, I have no hesitation in asserting of his philosophical 
. 27 



314 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

scepticism, that this was not only beneficial in its results, but, 
in the circumstances of the period, even a necessary step in 
the progress of Philosophy towards Truth." And again he 
says, *' To Hume we owe the philosophy of Kant, and there- 
fore also, in general, the later philosophy of Germany." 
"To Hume, in like manner, we owe the philosophy of Reid, 
and, consequently, what is now distinctively known in Europe 
as the Philosophy of the Scottish School." Great praise 
this from one of the greatest Christian philosophers of this 
century, and it shows Hume to have been more original as a 
philosopher than as an historian. 

He is also greatly commended by Lord Brougham as a polit- 
ical economist. ^^Y{\s> FoUiical Discow'ses,'" says his lord- 
ship, " combine almost every excellence which can belong to 
such a performance. . . . Their great merit is their origi- 
nality, and the new system of politics and political economy 
which they unfold." 

Miracles. — The work in which is most fairly set forth his 
religious scepticism is his Essay 011 Miracles. In it he adopts 
the position of Locke, who had declared ''that men should 
not believe any proposition that is contrary to reason, on the 
authority either of inspiration or of miracle ; for the reality 
of the inspiration or of the miracle can only be established 
by reason." Before Hume, assaults on the miracles recorded 
in Scripture were numerous and varied. Spinoza and the 
Pantheistic School had started the question, "Are miracles 
possible?" and had taken the negative. Hume's question 
is, "Are miracles credible?" And as they are contrary to 
human experience, his answer is essentially that it must be 
always more probable that a miracle is false than that it is 
true ; since it is not contrary to experience that witnesses are 
false or deceived. With him it is, therefore, a question of 
the preponderance of evidence, which he declares to be 
always against the miracle. This is not the place to discuss 



HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 315 

these topics. Archbishop Whately has practically illustrated 
the fallacy of Hume's reasoning, in a little book called 
Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte, in which, 
with Hume's logic, he has proved that the great emperor 
never lived; and Whately's successor in the archbishopric of 
Dublin, Dr. Trench, has given us some thoughtful words on 
the subject: '' So long as we abide in the region of nature, 
miraculous and improbable, miraculous and incredible may 
be allowed to remain convertible terms ; but once lift up the 
whole discussion into a higher region, once acknowledge 
aught higher than nature — a kingdom of God, and men the 
intended denizens of it — and the whole argument loses its 
strength and the force of its conclusions." 

Hume's death occurred on the 25th of August, 1776. His 
scepticism, or philosophy as he called it, remained with him 
to the end. He even diverted himself with the prospect of 
the excuses he would make to Charon as he reached the fatal 
river, and is among the i^\N doubters who have calmly ap- 
proached the grave without that concern which the Christian's 
hope alone is generally able to dispel. 



William Robertson — the second of the great historians 
of the eighteenth century, although very different from 
the others in his personal life and in his creed, — was, like 
them, a representative and creature of the age. They form, 
indeed, a trio in literary character as well as in period ; and 
we have letters from each to the others on the appearance of 
their works, showing that they form also what in the present 
day is called a '' Mutual Admiration Society." They were 
above common envy : they recognized each other's excel- 
lence, and forbore to speak of each other's faults. As a 
philosopher, Hume was the greatest of the three ; as an histo- 
rian, the palm must be awarded to Gibbon. But Robertson 
surprises us most from the fact that a quiet Scotch pastor, 
who pever travelled, should have attempted, and so gracefully 
treated, subjects of such general interest as those he handled. 



3l6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

William Robertson was t1ie son of a Scottish minister, and 
was born at Borthwick, in Scotland, on September 19th, in 
the year 1721. He was a precocious child, and, after attend- 
ing school at Dalkeith, he entered the University of Edin- 
burgh at the age of twelve. At the age of twenty he was li- 
censed to preach. He j)ublished, in 1755, ^ sermon on The 
Situation of the World at the Time of Chris f s Appearance, 
which attracted attention ; but he astonished the world by 
issuing, in 1759, h's History of Scotland During the Reigns 
of Queen Mary, and of Javies VI. until his Accession to the 
Crown of England. This is undoubtedly his best work, but 
not of such general interest as his others. His materials were 
scanty, and he did not consult such as were in his reach with 
much assiduity. The invaluable records of the archives of 
Simancas were not then opened to the world, but he lived 
among the scenes of his narrative, and had the advantage of 
knowing all the traditions and of hearing all the vehement 
opinions p7'o and con upon the subjects of which he treated. 
The character of Queen Mary is drawn with a just but sym- 
pathetic hand, and his verdict is not so utterly denunciatory 
as that of Mr. Froude. Such was the popularity of this work, 
that in 1764 its author was appointed to the honorable office 
of Historiographer to His Majesty for Scotland. In 1769 he 
published his History of Charles V. Here was a new sur- 
prise. Whatever its faults, as afterwards discerned by the 
critics, it opened a new and brilliant page to the uninitiated 
reader, and increased his reputation very greatly. The his- 
tory is preceded by a View of the Progress of Society in Eu- 
rope from the Subversion of the Roman E7?ipire to the Begin- 
ning of the Sixteenth Centujj. The best praise that can be 
given to this View is, that students have since used it as the 
most excellent summary of that kind existing. Of the his- 
tory itself it may be said that, while it is greatly wanting in 
historic material in the interest of the narrative and the splen- 
dor of the pageantry of the imperial court, it marked a new 
era in historical delineations. 



HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 317 

History of America. — In 1777 appeared the first eight 
books of his History of America, to which, in 1778, he ap- 
pended additions and corrections. The concluding books, 
the ninth and tenth, did not appear until 1796, when, three 
years after his death, they were issued by his son. As a con- 
nected narrative of so great an event in the world's history 
as the discovery of America, it stood quite alone. If, since 
that time, far better and fuller histories have appeared, we 
should not withhold our meed of praise from this excellent 
forerunner of them all. One great defect of this and the 
preceding work was his want of knowledge of the German 
and Spanish historians, and of the original papers then locked 
up in the archives of Simancas ; later access to which has 
given such great value to the researches of Irving and Pres- 
cott and Sterling. Besides, Robertson lacked the life-giving 
power which is the property of true genius. His characters 
are automata gorgeously arrayed, but without breath ; his 
style is fluent and sometimes sparkling, but in all respects he 
has been superseded, and his works remain only as curious 
representatives of the age to the literary student. One other 
work remains to be mentioned, and that is his Histoi^ical Dis- 
quisition Concerjiing the Knowledge which the Ancients had of 
India, and the Progress of Trade with that Country Prior to 
the Discovery of the Passage to it by the Cape of Good Hope. 
This is chiefly of value as it indicates the interest felt in Eng- 
land at the rise of the English Empire in India ; but for real 
facts it has no value at all. 



Gibbon. — Last in order of time, though far superior as an 
historian to Hume and Robertson, stands Edward Gibbon, the 
greatest historian England has produced, whether we regard 
the dignity of his style — antithetic and sonorous; the range 
of his subject — the history of a thousand years; the aston- 
ishing fidelity of his research in every department which con- 
,27^ 



3l8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

tains historic materials ; or the symmetry and completeness 
of his colossal work* 

Like Hume, he has left us a sketch of his own life and 
labors, simple and dispassionate, from which it appears that 
he was born in London on the 27th of April, 1737; and, 
being of a good family, he had every advantage of education. 
Passing a short time at the University of Oxford, he stands 
in a small minority of those who can find no good in their 
'Alma Mater. "To the University of Oxford," he says, "I 
acknowledge no obligation, and she will as cheerfully re- 
nounce me for a son as I am willing to disclaim her for a 
mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College. 
They proved to be fourteen of the most idle and unprofitable 
months of my whole life." This singular experience may be 
contrasted with that of hundreds, but may be most fittingly 
illustrated by stating that of Dr. Lowth, a venerable con- 
temporary of the historian. He speaks enthusiastically of 
the place where the student is able "to breathe the same 
atmosphere that had been breathed by Hooker and Chilling- 
worth and Locke ; to revel in its grand and well-ordered 
libraries ; to form part of that academic society w^here emu- 
lation without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention 
without animosity, incited industry and aw^akened genius." 

Gibbon, while still in his boyhood, had read with avidity 
ancient and modern history, and had written a juvenile paper 
on The Age of Sesostris, which was, at least, suggested by 
Voltaire's Steele de Louis XIV. 

Early interested, too, in the history of Christianity, his 
studies led him to become a Roman Catholic; but his belief 
was by no means stable. Sent by his father to Lausanne, in 
Switzerland, to be under the religious training of a Protestant 
minister, he changed his opinions, and became again a Pro- 
testant. His convictions, however, were once more shaken, 
and, at the last, he became a man of no creed, a sceptic of 
the school of Voltaire, a creature of the age of illumination. 



HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 3I9 

Many passages of his history display a sneering unbelief, 
which moves some persons more powerfully than the subtlest 
argument. This modern Platonist, beginning with sensation, 
evolves his philosophy from within, — from the finite mind; 
whereas human history can only be explained in the light of 
revelation, which gives to humanity faith, but which educes 
all science from the infinite — the mind of God. 

The history written by Gibbon, called The Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire, begins with that empire in its best 
days, under Hadrian, and extends to the taking of Constanti- 
nople by the Turks, under Mohammed II., in 1453. 

And this marvellous scope he has treated with a wonderful 
equality of research and power; — the world-absorbing em- 
pire, the origin and movements of the northern tribes and 
the Scythian marauders, the fall of the Western Empire, the 
history of the civil law, the establishment of the Gothic 
monarchies, the rise and spread of Mohammedanism, the 
obscurity of the middle age deepening into gloom, the cru- 
sades, the dawning of letters, and the inauguration of the 
modern era after the fall of Constantinople, — the detailed 
history of a thousand years. It is difficult to conceive that 
any one should suggest such a task to himself; it is astonish- 
ing to think that, with a dignified, self-reliant tenacity of 
purpose, it should have been completely achieved. It was an 
historic period, in which, in the words of Corneille, " Un 
grand destin commence un grand destin s^ acheve^ In many 
respects Gibbon's work stands alone; the general student 
must refer to Gibbon, because there is no other work to which 
he can refer. It was translated by Guizot into French, the 
first volume by Wenck into German (he died before com- 
pleting it) ; and it was edited by Dean Milman in England. 

The style of Gibbon is elegant and powerful ; at first it is 
singularly pleasing, but as one reads it becomes too sonorous, 
and fatigues, as the crashing notes of a grand march tire the 
ear. ^His periods are antithetic; each contains a surprise 



320 ENGLISHLITERATURE. 

and a witty point. His first two volumes have less of this 
stately magnificence, but in his later ones, in seeking to vin- 
dicate popular applause, he aims to shine, and perpetually 
labors for effect. Although not such a philosopher as Hume, 
his work is quite as philosophical as Hume's history, and he 
has been more faithful in the use of his materials, (xuizot, 
while pointing out his errors, says he was struck, after "a 
second and attentive perusal," with "the immensity of his 
researches, the variety of his knowledge, and, above all, with 
that truly philosophical discrimination which judges the past 
as it would judge the present." 

The danger to the unwary reader is from the sceptical bias 
of the author, which, while he states every important fact, 
leads him, by its manner of presentation, to warp it, or put it 
in a false light. Thus, for example, he has praise for pagan- 
ism, and easy absolution for its sins; Mohammed walks the 
stage with a stately stride ; Alaric overruns Europe to a grand 
quickstep ; but Christianity awakens no enthusiasm, and re- 
ceives no eulogium, although he describes its early struggles, 
its martyrdoms, its triumphs under Constantine, its gentle 
radiance during the dark ages, and its powerful awakening. 
Because he cannot believe, he cannot even be just. 

In his special chapter on the rise and spread of Christianity, 
he gives a valuable summary of its history, and of the claims 
of the papacy, with perhaps a leaning towards the Latin 
Church, Gibbon finished his work at Lausanne on the 27th 
of June, 1787. 

Its conception had come to his mind as he sat one evening 
amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome, and heard the bare- 
footed friars singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, He had 
then thought of writing the decline and fall of the city of Rome, 
but soon expanded his view to the empire. This was in 1764. 
Nearly thirteen years afterwards, he wrote the last line of the 
last page in his garden-house at Lausanne, and reflected joy- 
fully upon his recovered freedom and his permanent fame. 



HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 32 1 

His second thought, however, will fitly close this notice with 
a moral from his own lips: ''My pride was soon humbled, 
and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea 
that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable 
companion, and that whatever might be the future fate of my 
history, the life of the historian. must be short and precarious." 



Other Contributors to History. 

James Boswell, 1740-1795: he was the son of a Scottish judge called 
Lord Auchinleck, from his estate. He studied law, and travelled, pub- 
lishing, on his return, Journal of a Tour in Corsica. He appears to us 
a simple-hearted and amiable man, inquisitive, and exact in details. 
He became acquainted with Dr. Johnson in 1763, and conceived an im- 
mense admiration for him. In numerous visits to London, and in their 
tour to the Hebrides together, he noted Johnson's speech and actions, 
and, in 1791, published his life, which has already been characterized 
as the greatest biography ever written. Its value is manifold ; not only 
is it a faithful portrait of the great writer, but, in the detailed record of 
his life, we have the wit, dogmatism, and learning of his hero, as ex- 
pressing and illustrating the history of the age, quite as fully as the pub- 
lished works of Johnson. In return for this most valuable contribution 
to history and literature, the critics, one and all, have taxed their in- 
genuity to find strong words of ridicule and contempt for Boswell, and 
have done him great injustice. Because he bowed before the genius of 
Johnson, he was not a toady, nor a fool ; at the worst, he was a fanatic, 
and a not always wise champion. Johnson was his king, and his loy- 
alty was unqualified. 

Horace Walpole, the Right Honorable, and afterwards Earl of Orford, 
17 17-1797 : he was a wit, a satirist, and a most accomplished writer, 
who, notwithstanding, affected to despise literary fame. His paternity 
was doubted; but he enjoyed wealth and honors, and, by the possession 
of three sinecures, he lived a life of elegant leisure. He transformed a 
small house on the bank of the Thames, at Twickenham, into a minia- 
ture castle, called Strawberry Hill, which he filled with curiosities. He 
held a very versatile pen, and wrote much on many subjects. Among 
his desultory works are : Anecdotes of Painting in England, and Aides 
Walpoliaitce, a description of the pictures at Houghton Hall, the seat 
of Sir Robert Walpole. He also ranks among the novelists, as the 
author of The Castle of Otranto, in which he deviates from the path of 

V 



322 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

preceding writers of fiction — a sort of individual reaction from their 
portraitures of existing society to the marvellous and sensational. This 
work has been variously criticized ; by some it has been considered a 
great flight of the imagination, but by most it is regarded as unnatural 
and full of " pasteboard machineiy." He had immediate followers in 
this vein, among whom are Mrs. Aphra Behn, in her Old E^iglish 



ul)ts 



teries of Udolpho. Walpole also wrote a work entitled Historic Doul. 
on the Life and Reigti of Richard III. But his great value as a writer 
is to be found in his Alemoirs and varied Correspondence, in which he 
presents photographs of the society in which he lives. Scott calls him 
" the best letter-writer in the language." Among the series of his let- 
ters, those of the greatest historical importance are those addressed to 
Sir Horace Matin, betvi^een 1760 and 1785. Of this series, Macaulay, 
who is his severest critic, says : " It forms a connected whole — a regu- 
lar journal of what appeared to Walpole the most important transactions 
of the last twenty years of George II. 's reign. It contains much new 
information concerning the history of that time, the portion of English 
history of which common readers know the least." 

John Lord Hervey, 1696-1743: he is known for his attempts in poetry, 
and for a large correspondence, since published ; but his chief title to 
rank among the contributors to history is found in his Memoirs of 
the Court of George II. and Queen Caroline, which were not published 
until 1848. They give an unrivalled view of the court and of the 
royal household; and the variety of the topics, combined with the excel- 
lence of description, render them admirable as aids to understanding the 
history. 

Sir William Blackstone, 1 7 23-1 780: a distinguished lawyer, he was an 
unwearied student of the history of the English statute law, and was on 
that account made Professor of Law in the University of Oxford. Some 
time a member of Parliament, he was afterwards appointed a judge. 
He edited Magna Cha7'ta and The Forest Charter of King John and 
Henry III. But his great work, one that has made his name famous, 
is The Coimnerttaries on the Laws of England . Notwithstanding much 
envious criticism, it has maintained its place as a standard work. It 
has been again and again edited, and perhaps never better than by the 
Hon. George Sharswood, one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of 
Pennsylvania. 

Adam Smith, 1723-1790: this distinguished writer on political economy, 
the intelligent precursor of a system based upon the modern usage of 
nations, was educated at Glasgow and Oxford, and became in turn Pro- 



HISTORICAL TRIAD IN THE SCEPTICAL AGE. 323 



fessor of Logic and of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. 
His lecture courses in Moral Science contain the germs of his two prin- 
cipal works : I. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ■^w^ 2. An Enquiry 
into the A''attire and Causes of the Wealth of N'ations. The theory of the 
first has been superseded by the sounder views of later writers; but the 
second has conferred upon him enduring honor. In it he establishes as 
a principle that labor is the source of national wealth, and displays the 
value of division of labor. This work — written in clear, simple lan- 
guage, with copious illustrations — has had a wonderful influence upon 
the legislation and the commercial system of all civilized states since 
its issue, and has greatly conduced to the happiiiess of the human race. 
He wrote it in retirement, during a period of ten years. He astonished 
and instructed his period by presenting it with a new and necessary 
science. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES. 



Early Life and Career. 

London. 

Rambler and Idler. 



The Dictionary. 
Other Works. 
Lives of the Poets. 



Person and Character. 

Style. 
Junius, 



Early Life and Career. 

DOCTOR SAMUEL JOHNSON was poet, dramatist, 
essayist, lexicographer, dogQiatist, and critic, and, in 
this array of professional characters, pla3'ed so distinguished a 
part in his day that he was long regarded as a prodigy in Eng- 
lish literature. His influence has waned since his personality 
has groVn dim, and his learning been superseded or over- 
shadowed ', but he still remains, and must always remain, the 
most prominent literary figure of his age ; and this is in no 
small measure due to his good fortune in having such a cham- 
pion and biographer as Tames Boswell. Johnson's Life by 
Boswell is without a rival among biographies : in the words 
of Macaulay: ''Homer is not more decidedly the first of 
heroic poets ; Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of 
dramatists ; Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of 
orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers ; " and Burke 
has said that Johnson appears far greater in Boswell's book 
than in his own. We thus know everything about Johnson, 
as we do not know about any other literary man, and this 
knowledge, due to his biographer, is at least one of the ele- 
ments of Johnson's immense reputation. 

He was born at Lichfield on the i8th of September, 1709. 
His father was a bookseller ; and after having had a certain 

324 



SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES. 325 

amount of knowledge ''well beaten into him" by Mr. 
Hunter, young Johnson was for two years an assistant in his 
father's shop. But such was his aptitude for learning, that he 
was sent in 1728 to Pembroke College, Oxford. His youth 
was not a happy one : he was afflicted with scrofula, " which 
disfigured a countenance naturally well formed, and hurt his 
visual nerves so much that he did not see at all with one of 
his eyes." He had a morbid melancholy, — fits of dejection 
which made his life miserable. He was poor ; and when, in 
1 731, his father died insolvent, he was obliged to leave the || 

university without a degree. After fruitless attempts to estab- 
lish a school, he married, in 1736, Mrs. Porter, a widow, wiio 
had ^800. Rude and unprepossessing to others, she was 
sincerely loved by her husband, and deeply lamented when 
she died. In 1737 Johnson went to London in company 
with young Garrick, who had been one of his few pupils, and 
who was soon to fill the English world with his theatrical 
fame. 

London. — Johnson soon began to write for Cave's Gentle- 
maii s Magazine, and in 1738 he astonished Pope and the arti- 
ficial poets by producing, in their best vein, his imitation of 
the third Satire of Juvenal, which he called London. This 
was his usher into the realm of literature. But he did not 
become prominent until he had reached his fiftieth year ; he 
continued to struggle with gloom and poverty, too proud to 
seek patronage in an age when popular remuneration had not 
taken its place. In 1740 he was a reporter of the debates in 
parliament for Cave; and it is said that many of the indiffer- 
ent speakers were astonishtd to read the next day the fine 
things which the reporter had placed in their mouths, which 
they had never uttered. 

In 1749 he published his Vanity of Human Wishes, an imi- 
tation of the tenth Satire of Juvenal, which was as heartily 
welcomed djs> London had been. It is Juvenal applied to Eng- 
28 



326 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

lish and European history. It contains many lines familial 
to us all ; among them are the following : 

Let observation with extended view 
Survey mankind from Cliina to Peru. 

In speaking of Charles XIL, he says: 

His fall was destined to a barren strand, 
A petty fortress and a dubious hand; 
He left a name at which the world grew pale, 
To point a moral or adorn a tale. 

From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires a driveller and a show. 

In the same year he published his tragedy of Irene, which, 
notwithstanding the friendly efforts of Garrick, who was now 
manager of Drury Lane Theatre, was not successful. As a 
poet, Johnson was the perfection of the artificial school; and 
this very technical perfection was one of the causes of the 
reaction which was already beginning to sweep it away. 

Rambler and Idler. — In 1750 he commenced The Ram- 
bler, a periodical like The Spectator, of which he wrote nearly 
all the articles, and which lived for two years. Solemn, di- 
dactic, and sonorous, it lacked the variety and genial humor 
which had characterized Addison and Steele. In 1758 he 
started The Idler, in the same vein, which also ran its re- 
spectable course for two years. In 1 759 his mother died, and, 
m order to defray the expenses of her funeral, he wrote his 
story of Rasselas in the evenings of one week, for two editions 
of which he received £,^2<^. Full of moral aphorisms and in- 
struction, this '^Abyssinian tale" is entirely English in philos- 
ophy and fancy, and has not even the slight illusion of other 
Eastern tales in French and English, which were written about* 
the same time, and which are very similar in form and matter. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES. 32/ 

Of Rasselas, Hazlitt says: ''It is the most melanclioly and 
debilitating moral speculation that was ever put forth." 

The Dictionary. — As early as 1747 he had begun to write 
his English Dictionary, which, after eight years of incessant 
and unassisted labor, appeared in 1755. It was a noble 
thought, and produced a noble work — a work which filled 
an original vacancy. In France, a National Academy had un- 
dertaken a similar work; but this English giant had accom- 
plished his labors alone. The amount of reading necessary 
to fix and illustrate his definitions was enormous, and the book 
is especially valuable from the apt and varied quotations from 
English authors. He established the language, as he found it, 
on a firm basis in signification and orthography. He laid the 
foundation upon which future lexicographers were to build ; 
but he was ignorant of the Teutonic languages, from which so 
much of the structure and words of the English are taken, 
and thus is signally wanting in the scientific treatment of his 
subject. This is not to his discredit, for the science of lan- 
guage has had its origin in a later and modern time. 

Perhaps nothing displays more fully the proud, sturdy, and 
self-reliant character of the man, than the eight years of inces- 
sant and unassisted labor upon this work. 

His letter to Lord Chesterfield, declining his tardy patron- 
age, after experiencing his earlier neglect, is a model of severe 
and yet respectful rebuke^ and is to be regarded as one of the 
most significant events in his history. In it he says: "The 
notice you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it 
been early, had been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am 
indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and can- 
not impart it ; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope 
it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligation when 
no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the pub- 
lic should consider me as owing that to a patron which Provi- 
dence has enabled me to do for myself." Living as he did 



328 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

in an age when the patronage of the great was wearing out, 
and public appreciation beginning to reward an author's toils, 
this manly letter gave another stab to the former, and hastened 
the progress of the latter. 

Other Works. — The fame of Johnson was now fully 
established, and his labors were rewarded, in 1762, by the 
receipt of a pension of £z^o from the government, which 
made him quite independent. It was then, in the very hey- 
day of his reputation, that, in 1763, he became acquainted 
with James Boswell, to whom he at once became a Grand 
Lama ; who took down the words as they dropped from his 
lips, and embalmed his fame. 

In 1764 he issued his edition of Shakspeare, in eight octavo 
volumes, of which the best that can be said is, that it is not 
valuable as a commentary. A commentator must have some- 
thing in common with his author ; there was nothing conge- 
nial between Shakspeare and Johnson. 

It was in 1773, that, urged by Boswell, he made his famous 
Journey to the Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland, of 
which he gave delightful descriptions in a series of letters to 
his friend Mrs. Thrale, which he afterwards wrote out in more 
pompous style for publication. The letters are current, witty, 
and simple ; the published work is stilted and grandiloquent. 

It is well known that he had no sympathy with the Ameri- 
can colonies in their struggle against British oppression. 
When, in 1775, the Congress published their Resolutions and 
Address, he answered them in a prejudiced and illogical paper 
entitled Taxation no Tyranny. Notwithstanding its Avant of 
argument, it had the weight of his name and of a large party; 
but history has construed it by the animus of the writer, v/ho 
had not long before declared of the colonists that they were 
*'a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything 
we allow them short of hanging." 

As early as 1744 he had published a Life of the gifted but 



SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES. 329 

unhappy Savage, whom in his days of penury he had known, 
and with whom he had sympathized; but in 1781 appeared 
his Lives of the English Poets, with Critical Observations on 
their Works, and Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons. 

Lives of the Poets. — These comprise fifty -two poets, 
most of them little known at the present day, and thirteen 
eminent persons. Of historical value, as showing us the esti- 
mate of an age in which Johnson was an usher to the temple 
of Fame, they are now of little other value ; those of his own 
school and coterie he could understand and eulogize. To 
Milton he accorded carefully measured praise, but could not 
do him full justice, from entire want of sympathy; the majesty 
of blank verse pentameters he could not appreciate, and from 
Milton's Puritanism he recoiled with disgust. 

Johnson died on the 13th of December, 1784, and was 
buried in Westminster Abbey ; a flat stone with an inscription 
was placed over his grave : it was also designed to erect his 
monument there, but St. Paul's Cathedral was afterwards 
chosen as the place. There, a colossal figure represents the 
distinguished author, and a Latin epitaph, written by Dr. 
Parr, records his virtues and his achievements in literature. 

Person and Character. — A few words must suffice to 
give a summary of his character, and will exhibit some sin- 
gular contrarieties. He had varied but not very profound 
learning; was earnest, self-satisfied, overbearing in argument, 
or, as Sir Walter Scott styles it, despotic. As distinguished for 
his powers of conversation as for his writings, he always talked 
ex cathedra, and was exceedingly impatient of opposition. 
Brutal in his word attacks, he concealed by tone and manner 
a generous heart. Grandiloquent in ordinary matters, he 
''made little fishes talk like whales." 

Always swayed by religious influences, he was intolerant of 
the sects around him ; habitual) }• pious, he was not without 
28* 



330 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

superstition ; he was not an unbeliever in ghostly apparitions, 
and had a great fear of death; he also had the touching mania 
— touching every post as he walked along the street, thereby 
to avoid some unknown evil. 

Although of rural origin, he became a thorough London 
cockney, and his hatred of Scotchmen and dissenters is at 
once pitiful and ludicrous. His manners and gestures were 
uncouth and disagreeable. He devoured rather than eat his 
food, and was a remarkable tea-drinker; on one occasion, 
perhaps for bravado, taking twenty-five cups at a sitting. 

Massive in figure, seamed with scrofulous scars and marks, 
seeing with but one eye, he had convulsive motions and 
twitches, and his slovenly dress added to the uncouthness and 
oddity of his appearance. In all respects he was an original, 
and even his defects and peculiarities seemed to conduce to 
make him famous. 

Considered the first among the critics of his own day, later 
judgments have reversed his decisions ; many of those whom 
he praised have sunk into obscurity, and those whom he failed 
to appreciate have been elevated to the highest pedestals in 
the literary House of Fame. 

Style. — His style is full-sounding and antithetic, his peri- 
ods are carefully balanced, his manner eminently respectable 
and good ; but his words, very many of them of Latin deriva- 
tion, constitute what the later critics have TvdLX^tdi Johnsonese, 
which is certainly capable of translation into plainer Saxon 
English, with good results. Thus, in speaking of Addison's 
style, he says: "It is pure without scrupulosity, and exact 
without apparent elaboration ; ... he seeks no ambitious or- 
naments, and tries no hazardous innovations ; his page is 
always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendor." 
Very numerous examples might be given of sentences most 
of the words in which might be replaced by simpler expres- 
sions with great advantage to the sound and to the sense. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES. 



331 



As a critic, his word was law : his opinion was clearly and 
often severely expressed on literary men and literary subjects, 
and no great writer of his own or a past age escaped either 
his praise or his censure. Authors wrote with the fear of his 
criticism before their eyes ; and his pompous diction was long 
imitated by men who^ without this influence, would have writ- 
ten far better English. But, on the other hand, his honesty, 
his scholarship, his piety, and his championship of what was 
good and true, as depicted in his writings, made him a bless- 
ing to his time, and an honored and notable character in the 
noble line of English authors. 



Junius. — Among the most significant and instructive writ- 
ings to the student of English history, in the earlier part of the 
reign of George III., is a series of letters written by a person, 
or by several persons in combination, whose nom de plume 
was Junius. These letters specified the errors and abuses of 
the government, were exceedingly bold in denunciation and 
bitter in invective. The letters of Junius were forty-four in 
number, and were addressed to Mr. Woodfall, the proprietor 
of The Public Advertiser, a London newspaper, in which they 
were published. Fifteen others in the same vein were signed 
Philo-Junius; and there are besides sixty-two notes addressed 
by Junius to his publisher. 

The principal letters signed Junius were addressed to min- 
isters directly, and the first, on the State of the Nation, was a 
manifesto of the grounds of his writing and his purpose. It 
was evident that a bold censor had sprung forth ; one ac- 
quainted with the secret movements of the government, and 
with the foibles and faults of the principal statesmen : they 
writhed under his lash. Some of the more gifted attempted 
to answer him, and, as in the case of Sir William Draper, met 
with signal discomfiture. Vigorous efforts were made to dis- 
cover the offender, but without success; and as to his first 
patriotic intentions he soon added personal spite, the writer 



332 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

found that his life would not be safe if his secret were discov- 
ered. The rage of parties has long since died away, and the 
writer or writers have long been in their graves, but the curi- 
ous secret still remains, and has puzzled the brains of students 
to the present day. AUibone gives a list of forty-two persons 
to whom the letters were in whole or in part ascribed, among 
whom are Colonel Barre, Burke, Lord Chatham, General 
Charles Lee, Home Tooke, Wilkes, Horace Walpole, Lord 
Lyttleton, Lord George Sackville, and Sir Philip Francis. 
Pamphlets and books have been written by hundreds upon 
this question of authorship, and it is not yet by any means 
definitely settled. The concurrence of the most intelligent 
investigators is in favor of Sir Philip Francis, because of the 
handwriting being like his, but slightly disguised ; because he 
and Junius were alike intimate with the government workings 
in the state department and in the war department, and took 
notes of speeches in the House of Lords; because the letters 
came to an end just before Francis was sent to India; and 
because, indecisive as these claims are, they are stronger than 
those of any other suspected author. Macaulay adds to these: 
*'One of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was 
Junius is the mora/ resemblsincQ between the two men." 

It is interesting to notice that the ministry engaged Dr. 
Johnson to answer the forty-second letter, in which the king 
is especially arraigned. Johnson's answer, published in 1771, 
is entitled Thoughts on the Late Transactions respecting Falk- 
land' s Islands. Of Junius he says: " He cries havoc with- 
out reserve, and endeavors to let slip the dogs of foreign and 
civil war, ignorant whither they are going, and careless what 
maybe their prey." ^'It is not hard to be sarcastic in a 
mask ; while he walks like Jack the giant-killer, in a coat of 
darkness, he may do much mischief with little strength." 
''Junius is an unusual phenomenon, on which some have gazed 
with wonder and some with terror ; but wonder and terror 
are transitory passions. He will soon be more closely viewed, 



SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES. 333 

or more attentively examined, and what folly has taken for a 
comet, that from its flaming hair shook pestilence and war, in- 
quiry will find to be only a meteor formed by the vapors of 
putrefying democracy, and kindled into flame by the effer- 
vescence of interest struggling with conviction, which, after 
having plunged its followers into a bog, will leave us inquir- 
ing why we regarded it." 

Whatever the moral effect of the writings of Junius, as ex- 
hibited by silent influence in the lapse of years, the schemes 
he proposed and the party he championed alike failed of suc- 
cess. His farewell letter to Woodfall bears date the 19th of 
January, 1773. In that letter he declared that '' he must be an 
idiot to write again ; that he had meant well by the cause and 
the public ; that both were given up ; that there were not ten 
men who would act steadily together on any question."^ 
But one thing is sure : he has enriched the literature with pub- 
lic letters of rare sagacity, extreme elegance of rhetoric and 
great logical force, and has presented a problem always curi- 
ous and interesting -for future students, — not yet solved, in 
spite of Mr. Chabot's recent book,^ and every day becoming 
more difficult of solution, — Who was Jimiiis ? 

' Macaulay : Art. on Warren Hastings. 

2 The handwriting of Junius professionally investigated by Mr. Charles 
P. Chabot. London, 1871. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE LITERARY FORGERS IN THE ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 



The Eighteenth Century, 


Thomas Chatterton. 


Suicide. 


James Macpherson. 


His Poems. 


The Cause 


Ossian, 


The Verdict. 





The Eighteenth Century. , 

THE middle of the eighteenth century is marked as a pe- 
riod in which, while other forms of literature flourished, 
there arose a taste for historic research. Not content with 
the actual in poetry and essay and pamphlet, there was a 
looking back to gather up a record of what England had done 
and had been in the past, and to connect, in logical relation, 
her former with her latter glory. It was, as we have seen, 
the era of her great historians, Hume, Gibbon, and Robert- 
son, who, upon the chronicles, and the abundant but scattered 
material, endeavored to construct philosophic history; it was 
the day of her greatest moralists, Adam Smith, Tucker, and 
Paley, and of research in metaphysics and political economy. 
In this period Bishop Percy collected the ancient English 
ballads, and also historic poems from the Chinese and the 
Runic; in it Warton wrote his history of poetry. Dr. John- 
son, self-reliant and laborious, was producing his dictionary, 
and giving limits and coherence to the language. Mind was 
on the alert, not only subsidizing the present, but looking 
curiously into the past. I have ventured to call it the anti- 
quarian age. In 1751, the Antiquarian Society of London 
was firmly established ; men began to collect armor and relics : 
in this period grew up such an antiquary as Mr. Oldbuck, who 

334 



LITERARY FORGERS IN ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 335 

curiously sought out every relic of the Roman times, — armor, 
fosses, and prcBtoria, — and found, with much that v/as real, 
many a fraud or delusion. It was an age which, in the words 
of old Walter Charleton, ''despised the present as an inno- 
vation, and slighted the future, like the madman who fell in 
love with Cleopatra." 

There was manifestly a great temptation to adventurous 
men — with sufficient learning, and with no high notion of 
honor — to creep into the distant past ; to enact, in mask and 
domino, its literary parts, and endeavor to deceive an age 
already enthusiastic for antiquity. 

Thus, in the third century, if we may believe the Scotch 
and Irish traditions, there existed in Scotland a great chief- 
tain named Fion na Gael — modernized into Fingal — who 
fought with Cuthullin and the Irish warriors, and whose ex- 
ploits were, as late as the time of which we have been speak- 
ing, the theme of rude ballads among the highlands and 
islands of Scotland. To find and translate these ballads was 
charming and legitimate work for the antiquarian ; to coun- 
terfeit them, and call them by the name of a bard of that 
period, was the great temptation to the literary forger. Of 
such a bard, too, there was a tradition. As brave as were the 
deeds of Fingal, their fame was not so great as that of his son 
Ossian, who struck a lofty harp as he recounted his father's 
glory. Could the real poem.s be found, they would verify the 
lines : 

From the barred visor of antiquity 
Reflected shines the eternal light of Truth 
As from a mirror. 

And if they could not be found, they might be counterfeited. 
This was undertaken by Doctor James Macpherson. Catering 
to the spirit of the age, he reproduced the songs of Ossian 
and the lofty deeds of Fingal. 

Again, we have referred, in an early part of this work, to the 



33^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

almost barren expanse in the highway of English literature 
from the death of Chaucer to the middle of the sixteenth 
century ; this barrenness was due, as we saw, to the turbulence 
of those years — civil war, misgovernment, a time of bloody 
action rather than peaceful authorship. Here, too, was a 
great temptation for some gifted but oblique mind to supply 
a partial literature for that bare period ; a literature which, 
entirely fabricated, should yet bear all the characteristics of 
the history, language, customs, manners, and religion of that 
time. 

This attempt was made by Thomas Chatterton, an obscure, 
ill-educated lad, without means or friends, but who had a 
master-mind, and would have accomplished some great feat 
in letters, had he not died, while still very young, by his own 
hand. 

Let us examine these frauds in succession : we shall find 
them of double historic value, as literary efforts in one age 
designed to represent the literature of a former age. 

James Macpherson. — James Macpherson was born at 
Ruthven, a village in Inverness-shire, in 1 738. Being intended 
for the ministry, he received a good preliminary education, 
and became early interested in the ancient Gaelic ballads and 
poetic fragments still floating about the Highlands of Scotland. 
By the aid of Mr. John Home, the author of Douglas^ and 
his friends Blair and Ferguson, he published, in 1760, a 
small volume of sixty pages entitled. Fragments of Ancient 
Poetry translated front the Gaelic or Erse Language. They 
were heroic and harmonious, and were very well received : 
he had catered to the very spirit of the age. At first, there 
seemed to be no doubt as to their genuineness. It was known 
to tradition that this northern Fingal had fought with Severus 
and Caracalla, on the banks of the Carun, and that blind 
Ossian had poured forth a flood of song after the fight, and 
made the deeds immortal. And now these songs and deeds 



LITERARY FORGERS IN ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 337 

were echoing in English ears, — the thrumming of the harp 
which told of '* the stream of those olden years, where they 
have so long hid, m their mist, their many-colored sides."' 
{Catkloda, Duan III.) 

So enthusiastically were these poems received, that a sub- 
scription was raised to enable Macpherson to travel in the 
Highlands, and collect more of this lingering and beautiful 
poetry. 

Gray the poet, writing to William Mason, in 1760, says: 
"These poems are in everybody's mouth in the Highlands; 
have been handed down from father to son. We have there- 
fore set on foot a subscription of a guinea or two apiece, in 
order to enable Mr. Macpherson to recover this poem (Fingal), 
and other fragments of antiquity." 

Fingal. — On his return, in 1762, he published Fingal, and, 
in the same volume, some smaller poems. This Fingal, which 
he calls '*an ancient epic poem " in six duans or books, re- 
counts the deliverance of Erin from the King of Lochlin. 
The next year, 1763, he published Temora. Among the 
earlier poems, in all which Fingal is the hero, are passages of 
great beauty and touching pathos. Such, too, are found in 
Carricthiira and Carihon, the War of Inis-thona, and the 
Songs of Selma. After reading these, we are pleasantly 
haunted with dim but beautiful pictures of that Northern coast 
where '*the blue waters rolled in light," *'when morning rose 
in the east;" and again with ghostly moonlit scenes, when 
"night came down on the sea, and Rotha's Bay received the 
ship." **The wan, cold moon rose in the east; sleep de- 
scended upon the youths; their blue helmets glitter to the 
beam ; the fading fire decays ; but sleep did not rest on the 
king ; he rode in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended 
the hill to behold the flame of Sarno's tower. The flame was 
dim and distant ; the moon hid her red face in the east. A 
blast came from the mountain ; on its wings was the spirit of 
29 W 



338 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Loda." In CariJwji occurs that beautiful address to the Sun, 
which we are fortunate in knowing, from other sources than 
Macpherson, is a tolerably correct translation of a real origi- 
nal. If we had that alone, it would be a revelation of the 
power of Ossian, and of the aptitudes of a people who could 
enjoy it. It is not within our scope to quote from the veritable 
Ossian, or to expose the bombast and fustian, tumid diction 
and swelling sound of Macpherson, of which the poems con- 
tain so much. 

As soon as a stir was made touching the authenticity of the 
poems, a number of champions sprang up on both sides : 
among those who favored Macpherson, was Dr. Hugh Blair, 
who -wrote the critical dissertation usually prefixed to the 
editions of Ossian, and who compares him favorably to 
Homer. First among the incredulous, as might be expected, 
was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, in \\\s Journey to the Hebrides, 
lashes Macpherson for his imposture, and his insolence in re- 
fusing to show the original. Johnson was threatened by Mac- 
pherson with a beating, and he answered: "I hope I shall 
never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the 
menaces of a ruffian. . . I thought your book an imposture; 
I think it an imposture still. . . Your rage I defy. . . You 
may print this if you will." 

Proofs of the imposture were little by little discovered by 
the critics. There were some real fragments in his first vol- 
ume ; but even these he had altered, and made symmetrical, 
so as to disguise their original character. Ossian would not 
have known them. As for Fingal, in its six duans, with cap- 
tional arguments, it was made up from a few fragments, and 
no such poem ever existed. It was Macpherson' s from be- 
ginning to end. 

The final establishment of the forgery was not simply by 
recourse to scholars versed in the Celtic tongues, but the 
Highland Society appointed a committee in 1767, whose 
duty it was to send to the Highland pastors a circular, inquir- 



LITERARY FORGERS IN ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 339 

ing whether they had heard in the original the poems of 
Ossian, said to be translated by Macpherson ; if so, where and 
by whom they had been written out or repeated : whether sim- 
ilar fragments still existed, and whether there were persons 
living who could repeat them ; whether, to their knowledge, 
Macpherson had obtained such poems in the Highlands ; and 
for any information concerning the personality of Fingal and 
Ossian. 

Criticism. — The result was as follows: Certain Ossianic 
poems did exist, and some manuscripts of ancient ballads and 
bardic songs. A few of these had formed the foundation of 
Macpherson' s so-called translations of the earlier pieces ; but 
he had altered and added to them, and joined them with his 
own fancies in an arbitrary manner, 

Fingal and Temora were also made out of a few fragments ; 
but in their epic and connected form not only did not exist, 
but lack the bardic character and construction entirely. 

Now that the critics had the direction of the chase made 
known, they discovered that Macpherson had taken his 
imagery from the Bible, of which Ossian was ignorant; from 
classic authors, of whom he had never heard ; and from 
modern sources down to his own day. 

Then Macpherson' s Ossian — which had been read with 
avidity and translated into many languages, while it was 
considered an antique gem only reset in English — fell into 
disrepute, and was unduly despised when known to be a 
forgery. 

It is difficult to conceive why he did not produce the work 
as his own, with a true story of its foundation : it is not so 
difficult to understand why, when he was detected, he per- 
sisted in the falsehood. For what it really is, it must be par- 
tially praised ; and it will remain not only as a literary curiosity, 
but as a work of unequal but real merit. It was greatly ad- 
mired by Napoleon and Madame de Stael, and, in endeavor- 



340 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

ing to consign it to oblivion, the critics are greatly in the 
wrong. 

Macpherson resented any allusion to the forgery, and any 
leading question concerning it. He refused, at first, to produce 
the originals; and when he did say where they might be found, 
the world had decided so strongly against him, that there was 
no curiosity to examine them. He at last maintained a sullen 
silence; and, dying suddenly, in 1796, left no papers which 
throw light upon the cantroversy. The subject is, however, 
still agitated. Later writers have endeavored to reverse the 
decision of his age, without, however, any decided success. 
For much information concerning the Highland poetry, the 
reader is referred to A Summer in Skye, by Alexander Smith. 

Other Works. — His other principal work was a Transla- 
tion of the Iliad of Homer m the Ossianic style, which was re- 
ceived with execration and contempt. He also wrote A His- 
ioiy of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession 
of the House of Hanover, which Fox — who was, however, 
prejudiced — declared to be full of impudent falsehoods. 

Of his career little more need be said : he was too shrewd 
a man to need sympathy ; he took care of himself. Fie 
was successful in his pecuniary schemes; as agent of the 
Nabob of Arcot, he had a seat in parliament for ten years, 
and was quite unconcerned w^hat the world thought of his 
literary performances. He had achieved notoriety, and en- 
joyed it. 

But, unfortunately, his forgery did fatal injury by its example; 
it inspired Chatterton, the precocious boy, to make another 
attempt on public credulity. It opened a seductive path for 
one who, inspired by the adventure and warned by the 
causes of exposure, might make a better forgery, escape de- 
tection, and gain great praise in the antiquarian world. 

Thomas Chatterton. — With this name, we accost the 



LITERARY FORGERS IN ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 34I 

most wonderful story of its kind in any literature ; so strange, 
indeed, that we never take it up without trying to discover 
some new meaning in it. We hope, against hope, that the 
forgery is not proved. 

Chatterton was born in Bristol, on the Avon, in 1752, of 
poor parents, but early gave signs of remarkable genius, com- 
bined with a prurient ambition. A friend who wished to pre- 
sent him with an earthen-ware cup, asked him what device he 
would have upon it. "Paint me," he answered, "an angel 
with wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the 
world." He learned his alphabet from an old music-book; 
at eight years of age he was sent to a charity-school, and he 
spent his little pocket-money at a circulating library, the books 
of which he literally devoured. 

At the early age of eleven he wrote a piece of poetry, and 
published it in the Bristol Journal of January 8, 1763; it 
was entitled On the last Epiphany, or Christ coming to Judg- 
ment, and the next year, probably, a Hymn to Christmas-day, 
of which the following lines will give an idea: 

How shall we celebrate his name, 
Who groaned beneath a life of shame, 

In all afflictions tried ? 
The soul is raptured to conceive 
A truth which being must believe ; 

The God eternal died. 

My soul, exert thy pov/ers, adore; 
Upon Devotion's plumage soar 

To celebrate the day. 
The God fi-om whom creation sprung 
Shall animate my grateful tongue, 

From Him I '11 catch the lay. 

Some member of the Chatterton family had, for one hun- 
dred and fifty years, held the post of sexton in the church of 
St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol ; and at the time of which we 
29* 



342 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

write his uncle was sexton. In the muniment-room of the 
church were several coifers, containing old papers and parch- 
ments in black letter, some of which were supposed to be of 
value. The chests v/ere examined by order of the vestry ; the 
valuable papers were removed, and of the rest, as perquisites 
of the sexton, some fell into the hands of Chatterton's father. 
The boy, who had been, upon leaving school, articled to an at- 
torney, and had thus become familiar with the old English text, 
caught sight of these, and seemed then to have first formed 
the plan of turning them to account, as The Row lie papers. 

Old Manuscripts. — If he could be believed, he found a 
variety of material in this old collection. To a credulous 
and weak acquaintance, Mr. Burgum, he went, beaming with 
joy, to present the pedigree and illuminated arms of the de 
Bergham family — tracing the honest mechanic's descent to a 
noble house which crossed the Channel with William the Con- 
queror. The delighted Burgum gave him a crown, and Chat- 
terton, pocketing the money, lampooned his credulity thus: 

Gods ! what would Burgum give to get a name, 
And snatch his blundering dialect from shame ? 
What would he give to hand his memory down 
To time's remotest boundary ? a crown ! 
Would you ask more, his swelling face looks blue — 
Futurity he rates at two pound two ! 

In September, 1768, the inauguration or opening of the 
new bridge across the Avon took place ; and, taking advantage 
of the temporary interest it excited, Chatterton, then sixteen, 
produced in the Bristol Journal 2^ full description of the open- 
ing of the old bridge two hundred years before, which he 
said he found among the old papers : ^' A description of the 
Fryers first passing over the old bridge, taken from an ancient 
manuscript," with details of the procession, and the Latin 
sermon preached on the occasion by Ralph de Blundeville ; 



LITERARY FORGERS IN ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 343 

ending with the dinner,, the sports, and the ilhimination on 
Kynwulph HilL 

This paper, which attracted general interest, was traced to 
Chatterton, and when he was asked to show the original, it 
was soon manifest that there was none, but that the whole was 
a creation of his fancy. The question arises, — How did the 
statements made by Chatterton compare with the known 
facts of local history ? 

There was in the olden time in Bristol a great merchant 
named William Canynge, who was remembered for his phil- 
anthropy ; he had altered and improved the church, of St. 
Mary, and had built the muniment-room : the reputed poems, 
some of which were said to have been written by himself, and 
others by the monk Rowlie, Chatterton declared he had found 
in the coffers. Thomas Rowlie, ''the gode preeste," appears 
as a holy and learned man, poet, artist, and architect. Canynge 
and Rowlie were strong friends, and the latter was supposed to 
have addressed many of the poems to the former, who was his 
good patron. 

The principal of the Rowlie poems is the Bristo7ve (Bristol) 
Tragedy, or Death of Sir Charles B aw din. This Bawd in, or 
Baldwin, a real character, had been attainted by Edward IV. 
of high treason, and brought to the block. The poem is in 
the finest style of the old English ballad, and is wonderfully 
dramatic. King Edward sends to inform Bawdin of his fate : 

Then with a jug of nappy ale 
His knights did on him waite ; 
" Go tell the traitor that to dale 
He leaves this mortal state." 

Sir Charles receives the tidings with bold defiance. Good 
Master Canynge goes to the king to ask the prisoner's life as 
a boon. 

** My noble liege," good Canynge saide, 
" Leave justice to our God ; 
And lay the iron rule aside, 
Be thine the olyve rodde." 



344 ^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

The king is inexorable, and Sir Charles dies amid tears 
and loud weeping around the scaffold. 

Among the other Rowlie poems are the Tragical Interlude 
of Ella, *' plaied before Master Canynge, and also before 
Johan Howard, Duke of Norfolk; " Godwin, a short drama; 
a long poem on The Battle of Hastiiigs, and The Romaunt 
of the Knight, modernized from the original of John de 
Bergham. 

The Verdict. — These poems at once became famous, and 
the critics began to investigate the question of their authen- 
ticity. From this investigation Chatterton did not shrink. 
He sent some of them with letters to Horace Walpole, and, 
as Walpole did not immediately answer, he wrote to him quite 
impertinently. Then they were submitted to Mason and Gray. 
The opinion of those who examined them was almost unani- 
mous that they were forgeries : he could produce no originals; 
the language is in many cases not that of the period, and the 
spelling and idioms are evidently factitious. A few there 
were who seemed to have committed themselves, at first, to 
their authenticity ; but Walpole, the Wartons, Dr. Johnson, 
Gibbon the historian, Sheridan, and most other literary men, 
were clear as to their forgery. The forged manuscripts which 
he had the hardihood afterwards to present, were totally un- 
like those of Edward the Fourth's time ; he was entirely at 
fault in his heraldry ; words were used out of their meaning; 
and, in his poem on The Battle of Hastings, he had intro- 
duced the modern discoveries concerning Stone Henge. He 
uses the possessive case yttes, which did not 'come into use 
until long after the Rowlie period. Add to these that Chat- 
terton's reputation for veracity was bad. 

The truth was, that he had found some curious scraps, which 
had set his fancy to work, and the example of Macpherson 
had led to the cheat he was practising upon the public. To 
some friends he confessed the deception, denying it again, 



LITERARY FORGERS IN ANTIQUARIAN AGE. 345 

violently, soon after ; and he had been seen smoking parch- 
ment to make it look old. The lad was crazy. 



His Suicide. — Keeping up appearances, he went to Lon- 
don, and tried to get work. At one time he was in high 
spirits, sending presents to his mother and sisters, and prom- 
ising them better days ; at another, he was in want, in the 
lowest depression, no hope in the world. He only asks for 
work ; he is entirely unconcerned for w^hom he writes or 
what party he eulogizes ; he wants money and a name, and 
when these seem unattainable, he takes refuge from "the 
whips and scorns of time," the burning fever of pride, the 
gnawings of hunger, in suicide. He goes to his little garret 
room, — refusing, as he goes, a dinner from his landlady, al- 
though he is gaunt with famine, — mixes a large dose of arsenic 
in water, and — "jumps the life to come." He was just seven- 
teen years and nine months old ! When his room was forced 
open, it was found that he had torn up most of his papers, 
and had left nothing to throw light upon his deception. 

The verdict of literary criticism is that of the medical art — 
he was insane ; and to what extent this mania acted as a mono- 
mania, that is, how far he was himself deceived, the world 
can never know. One thing, at least; it redeems all his faults. 
Precocious beyond any other known instance of precocity; 
intensely haughty; bold in falsehood; working best when the 
moon was at the full, he stands in English literature as the most 
singular of its curiosities. His will is an awful jest; his dec- 
laration of his religious opinions a tissue of contradictions and 
absurdities: he bequeathes to a clergyman his humility; to Mr. 
Burgum his prosody and grammar, with half his modesty — 
the other half to any young lady that needs it ; his abstinence 
— a fearful legacy — to the aldermen of Bristol at their annual 
feast!, to a friend, a mourning ring — "provided he pays for 
it himself" — with the motto, "Alas, poor Chatterton ! " 
ilttest ending to his biography — " Alas, poor Chatterton! " 



i 



346 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

And yet it is evident that the crazy Bristol boy and the 
astute Scotchman were alike the creatures of the age and the 
peculiar circumstances in which they lived. No other age of 
English history could have produced them. In an earlier 
period, they would have found no curiosity in the people to 
warrant their attempts ; and in a later time, the increase in 
antiquarian studies would have made these efforts too easy of 
detection. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 



The Transition Period. 
James Thomson. 
The Seasons. 
The Castle of Indolence. 



Mark Akenside. 

Pleasures of the Imagination. 

Thomas Gray. 

The Elegy. The Bard. 



William Cowper. 
The Task. 

Translation of Homer. 
Other Writers. 



The Transition Period. 

THE poetical standards of Dryden and Pope, as poetic 
examples and arbiters, exercised tyrannical sway to the 
middle of the eighteenth century, and continued to be felt, 
with relaxing influence, however, to a much later period. 
Poetry became impatient of too close a captivity to technical 
rules in rhythm and in subjects, and began once again to seek 
its inspiration from the worlds of nature and of feeling. 
While seeking this change, it passed through what has been 
properly called the period of transition, — a period the writers 
of which are distinctly marked as belonging neither to the 
artificial classicism of Pope, nor to the simple naturalism of 
Wordsworth and the Lake school ; partaking, indeed, in some 
degree of the former, and preparing the way for the latter. 

The excited condition of public feeling during the earlier 
period, incident to the accession of the house of Hanover 
and the last struggles of the Jacobites, had given a political 
character to every author, and a political significance to 
almost every literary work. At the close of this abnormal 
condition of things, the poets of the transition school began 
their labors ; untrammelled by the court and the town, they 
invoked the muse in green fields and by babbling brooks j 

347 



348 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

from materialistic philosophy in verse they appealed through 
the senses to the hearts of men ; and appreciation and popu- 
larity rewarded and encouraged them. 

James Thomson. — The first distinguished writer of this 
school was Thomson, the son of a Scottish minister. He 
was born on the nth of September, 1700, at Ednam in Rox- 
burghshire. While a boy at school in Jedburgh, he displayed 
poetical talent : at the University of Edinburgh he completed 
his scholastic course, and studied divinity ; which, however, 
he did not pursue as a profession. Being left, by his father's 
death, without means, he resolved to go to the great metrop- 
olis to try his fortunes. He arrived in London in sorry 
plight, without money, and with ragged shoes ; but through 
the assistance of some persons of station, he procured occu- 
pation as tutor to a lord's son, and thus earned a livelihood 
until the publication of his first poem in 1726. That poem 
was Winter, the first of the series called The Seasons : it was 
received with unusual favor. The first edition was speedily 
exhausted, and with the publication of the second, his posi- 
tion as a poet was assured. In 1727 he produced the second 
poem of the series, Summer, and, with it, a proposal for issu- 
ing the Four Seasons, with a Hymn on their succession. In 
1728 his 6/^r//z^ appeared, and in the next year an unsuccess- 
ful tragedy called Sophonisba, which owed its immediate fail- 
ure to the laughter occasioned by the line, 

O Sophonisba, Sophonisba O ! 

.This was parodied by some wag in these words : 

O Jemmie Thomson, Jemmie Thomson O! 

and the ridicule was so potent that the play was ruined. 

The last of the seasons, Autumn, and the Hyjnn, were first 
printed in a complete edition of The Seasons, in 1730. It 
was at once conceded that he had gratified the cravings of the 



POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 349 

day, in producing a real and beautiful English pastoral. The 
reputation which he thus gained caused him to be selected as 
the mentor and companion of the son of Sir Charles Talbot 
in a tour through France and Italy in 1730 and 1731. 

In 1734 he published the first part of a poem called Lib- 
erty, the conclusion of which appeared in 1736. It is de- 
signed to trace the progress of Liberty through Italy, Greece, 
and Rome, down to her excellent establishment in Great 
Britain, and was dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales. 

His tragedies Agamemnon and Edward and Eleanora are 
in the then prevailing taste. They were issued in 1738-39. 
The latter is of political significance, in that Edward was 
like Frederick the Prince of Wales — heir apparent to the 
crown ; and some of the passages are designed to strengthen 
the prince in the favor of the people. 

The personal life of Thompson is not of much interest. 
From his first residence in London, he supported, with his 
slender means, a brother, who died young of consumption, 
and aided two maiden sisters, who kept a small milliner-shop 
in Edinburgh. This is greatly to^his praise, as he was at one 
time so poor that he was arrested for debt and committed to 
prison. As his reputation increased, his fortunes were amelio- 
rated. In 1745 his play Tancred and Sigismnnda was per- 
formed. It was founded upon a story universally popular, — 
the same which appears in the episode of The Fatal Marriage 
in Gil Bias, and in one of the stories of Boccaccio. He 
enjoyed for a short time a pension from the Prince of Wales, 
of which, however, he was deprived without apparent cause ; 
but he received the office of Surveyor- General of the Lee- 
ward Islands, the duties of which he could perform by 
deputy ; after that he lived a lazy life at his cottage near 
Richmond, which, if otherwise reprehensible, at least gave 
him the power to write his most beautiful poem. The Castle 
of Indolence. It appeared in 1748, and was universally ad- 
mired ; It has a rhetorical harmony similar and quite equal 
'30 



350 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

to that of the Lotos Eafefs of Tennyson. The poet, who 
had become quite plethoric, was heated by a walk from Lon- 
don, and, from a check of perspiration, w^as thrown into a 
high fever, a relapse of which caused his death on the 27th 
of August, 1748. His friend Lord Lyttleton wrote the pro- 
logue to his play of Coriolanus, which was acted after the 
poet's death, in which he says : 

" His chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught lyre 

None but the noblest passions to inspire, 
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, 
One line zvhic/i, dying, he could wish to blot.^'' 

The praise accorded him in this much-quoted line is justly his 
due : it is greater praise that he was opening a new pathway 
in English Literature, and supplying better food than the pre- 
ceding age had given. His Seasojis supplied a want of the 
age : it was a series of beautiful pastorals. The descriptions of 
nature will always be read and quoted with pleasure ; the lit- 
tle episodes, if they affect the unity, relieve the monotony of 
the subject, and, like figures introduced by the painter into his 
landscape, take away the sense of loneliness, and give us a 
standard at once of judgment, of measurement, and of sym- 
pathetic enjoyment ; they display, too, at once the workings 
of his own mind in his production, and the manners and sen- 
timents of the age in which he wrote. It was fitting that he 
w^io had portrayed for us such beautiful gardens of English 
nature, should people them instead of leaving them solitary. 

The Castle of Indolence. — This is an allegory, written 
after the manner of Spenser, and in the Spenserian stanza. 
He also employs archaic words, as Spenser did, to give it 
greater resemblance to Spenser's poem. The allegorical 
characters are well described, and the sumptuous adornings 
and lazy luxuries of the castle are set forth con aniore. The 
spell that enchants the castle is broken by the stalwart knight 
Industry ; but the glamour of the poem remains, and makes 
the reader in love with Indolence. 



POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 35I 

"Mark Akenside. — Thomson had restored or reproduced 
the pastoral from Nature's self; Akenside followed in his 
steps. Thomson had invested blank verse with a new power 
and beauty j Akenside produced it quite as excellent. But 
Thomson was the original, and Akenside the copy. The one 
is natural, the other artificial. 

Akenside was the son of a butcher, and was born at New 
Castle, in 1721. Educated at the University of Edinburgh, 
he studied medicine, and received, at different periods, lucra- 
tive and honorable professional appointments. His great 
work, and the only one to which we need refer, is his Pleas- 
ures of the Imagination. Whether his view of the imagina- 
tion is always correct or not, his sentiments are always ele- 
vated ; his language high sounding but frequently redundant, 
and his versification correct and pleasing. His descriptions 
of nature are cold but correct ; his standard of humanity is 
high but mortal. Grand and sonorous, he constructs his pe- 
riods with the manner of a declaimer ; his ascriptions and 
apostrophes are like those of a high-priest. The title of his 
poem, if nothing more, suggested The Pleasures of Hope to 
Campbell, and The Pleasures of Memory to Rogers. As a 
man, Akenside was overbearing and dictatorial ; as a hospital 
surgeon, harsh in his treatment of poor patients. His hymn 
to the Naiads has been considered the most thoroughly and 
correctly classical of anything in English. He died 011 the 
23d of June, 1770. 

Thomas Gray. — Among those who form a link between 
the school of Pope and that of the modern poets. Gray oc- 
cupies a distinguished place, both from the excellence of his 
writings, and from the fact that, while he unconsciously con- 
duced to the modern, he instinctively resisted its progress. 
He was in taste and intention an extreme classicist. Thomas 
Gray was born in London on the 26th December, 1716. 
His father was a money scrivener, and, to his family at least, 



352 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

a bad man ; his mother, forced to support herself, kept a 
linen-draper shop ; and to her the poet owed his entire edu- 
cation. He was entered at Eton College, and afterwards at 
Cambridge, and found in early life such friendships as were 
of great importance to him later in his career. Among his 
college friends were Horace Walpole, West, the son of the 
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and William Mason, who after- 
wards wrote the poet's life. After completing his college 
course, he travelled on the continent with Walpole ; but, on 
account of incompatibility of temper, they quarrelled and 
parted, and Gray returned home. Altliough Walpole took 
the blame upon himself, it would appear that Gray was a 
somewhat captious person, whose serious tastes interfered with 
the gayer pleasures of his friend. On his return. Gray went 
to Cambridge, where he led the life of a retired student, de- 
voting himself to the ancient authors, to poetry, botany, archi- 
tecture, and heraldry. He was fastidious as to his own pro- 
ductions, which were very few, and which he kept by him, 
pruning, altering, and polishing, for a long time before he 
would let them see the light. His lines entitled A Distant 
Prospect of Eton College appeared in 1742, and were received 
with great applause. 

It was at this time that he also began his Elegy in a Comitry 
ChiiJ'chyard ; which, however, did not appear until seven or 
eight years later, and which has made him immortal. The 
grandeur of its language, the elevation of its sentiments, and 
the sympathy of its pathos, commend it to all classes and all 
hearts ; and of its kind of composition it stands alone in 
English literature. 

The ode on the progress of poetry appeared in 1755. Like 
the Elegy, his poem of The Bard was for several years on the 
literary easel, and he was accidentally led to finish it by hear- 
ing a blind harper performing on a Welsh harp. 

On the death of Cibber, Gray was offered the laureate's 
crown, which he declined, to avoid its conspicuousness and 



POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 353 

the envy of his brother poets. In 1762, he applied for the 
professorship of modern history at Cambridge, but failed to 
obtain the position. He was more fortunate in 1768, when it 
again became vacant ; but he held it as a sinecure, doing none 
of its duties. He died in 1770, on the 3d of July, of gout 
in the stomach. His habits were those of a recluse j and 
whether we agree or not, with Adam Smith, in saying that 
nothing is wanting to render him perhaps the first poet in the 
English language, but to have written a little more, it is as- 
tonishing that so great and permanent a reputation should 
have been founded on so very little as he wrote. Gray has 
been properly called the finest lyric poet in the language ; 
and his lyric power strikes us as intuitive and original; yet 
he himself, adhering strongly to the artificial school, declared, 
if there was any excellence in his own numbers, he had learned 
it wholly from Dryden. His archisological tastes are further 
shown by his enthusiastic study of heraldry, and by his sur- 
rounding himself with old armor and other curious relics of 
the past. Mr. ^Nlitford, in a curious dissection of the Elegy, 
has found numerous errors of rhetoric, and even of grammar. 
His Bard is founded on a tradition that Edward L, when 
he conquered Wales, ordered all the bards to be put to death, 
that they might not, by their songs, excite the Welsh people 
to revolt. The last one who figures in his story, sings a lament 
for his brethren, prophesies the downfall of the usurper, and 
then throws himself over the cliff: 

" Be thine despair and sceptered care. 
To triumph and to die are mine ! " 
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height. 
Deep in the roaring tide, he plunged to endless night. 

William Cowper. — Next in the catalogue of the transi- 
tion school occurs the name of one who, like Gray, was a 
recluse, but with a better reason and a sadder one. He was a 
gentle hypochondriac, and, at intervals, a maniac, who liter- 
' -,o * X 



354 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

ally turned to poetry, like Saul to the harper, for relief from 
his sufferings. William Cowper, the eldest son of the Rector 
of Berkhampsted in Hertfordshire, was born on the 15th of 
November, 1731. He was a delicate and sensitive child, and 
was seriously affected by the loss of his mother when he was 
six years old. At school, he was cruelly treated by an older 
boy, which led to his decided views against public schools, 
expressed in his poem called Tii-ocinhun. His morbid sensi- 
tiveness increased upon him as he grew older, and interfered 
with his legal studies and advancement. His depression of 
spirits took a religious turn ; and we are glad to think that 
religion itself brought the balm which gave him twelve years 
of unclouded mind, devoted to friendship and to poetry. He 
was offered, by powerful friends, eligible positions connected 
with the House of Lords, in 1762 ; but as the one of these 
which he accepted was threatened with a public examination, 
he abandoned it in horror; not, however, before the fearful 
suspense had unsettled his brain, so that he was obliged to be 
placed, for a short time, in an asylum for the insane. When 
he left this asylum, he went to Huntingdon, where he became 
acquainted with the Rev. William Unwin, who, with his wife 
and son, seem to have been congenial companions to his 
desolate heart. On the death of Mr. Unwin, in 1767, he re- 
moved with the widow to Olney, and there formed an inti- 
mate acquaintance with another clergyman, the Rev. William 
Newton. Here, and in this society, the remainder of the 
poet's life was passed in writing letters, which have been con- 
sidered the best ever written in England ; in making hymns, 
in conjunction with Mr. Nev/ton, which have ever since been 
universal favorites \ and in varied poetic attempts, which give 
him high rank in the literature of the day. The first of his 
larger pieces was a poem entitled, The Prog7'ess of Error, 
which appeared in 1783, when the author had reached the 
advanced age of 52. Then followed Truth and Expostula- 
tion, which, according to the poet himself, did much towards 



POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 355 

diverting his melancholy thoughts. These poems would not 
have fixed his fame; but Lady Austen, an accomplished wo- 
man with whom he became acquainted in 1781, deserves our 
gratitude for having proposed to him the subjects of those 
poems which have really made him famous, namely. The 
Task, John Gilpin, and the translation of Homer. Before, 
however, undertaking these, he wrote poems on Hope, Char- 
ity, Conversation, and Retirement. The story oi John Gilpin — 
a real one as told him by Lady Austen — made such an impres- 
sion upon him, that he dashed off the ballad at a sitting. 

The Task. — The origin of The Task is well known. In 
1783, Lady iVusten suggested to him to write a poem in blank 
verse : he said he would, if she would suggest the subject. Her 
answer was, "Write on this sofa.'' The poem thus begun 
was speedily expanded into those beautiful delineations of 
varied nature, domestic life, and religious sentiment which ri- 
valled the best efforts of Thomson. The title that connects 
them is The Task. Tirocinium, or the Review of Schools, 
appeared soon after, and excited considerable attention in 
a country where public education has been the rule of the 
higher social life. Cowper began the translation of Homer 
in 1785, from a feeling of the necessity of employment for 
his mind. His translations of both Iliad and Odyssey, which 
occupied him for five years, and which did not entirely keep 
off his old enemy, were published in 1791. They are correct 
in scholarship and idiom, but lack the nature and the fire of 
the old Grecian bard. 

The rest of his life was busy, but sad — a constant effort to 
drive away madness by incessant labor. The loss of his 
friend, Mrs. Unwin, in 1796, affected him deeply, and the 
clouds settled thicker and thicker upon his soul. In the year 
before his death, he published that painfully touching poem, 
The Castaway, which gives an epitome of his own sufferings 
in the similitude of a wretch clinging to a spar in a storm.y 
night upon the Atlantic. 



356 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

His minor and fugitive poems are very numerous ; and as 
they were generally inspired by persons and scenes around 
him, they are truly literary types of the age in which he lived. 
In his Task, he resembles Thomson and Akenside ; in his 
didactic poems, he reminds us of the essays of Pope ; in his 
hymns he catered successfully to the returning piety of the 
age; in his translations of Homer and of Ovid, he presented 
the ancients to moderns in a new and acceptable dress ; and 
in his Letters he sets up an epistolary model, which may be 
profitably studied by all who desire to express themselves with 
energy, simplicity, and delicate taste. 

Other Writers of the Transition School. 

yames Beattie, 1 735-1803 : he was the son of a farmer, and was educated 
at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he was afterwards professor of 
natural philosophy. For four years he taught a village school. His 
first poem, Retirement, was not much esteemed; but in 1 77 1 appeared 
the first part of The Minstrel, a poem at once descriptive, didactic, and 
romantic. This was enthusiastically received, and gained for him the 
favor of the king, a pension of £200 per annum, and a degree from 
Oxford. The second part was published in 1774. The Mitistrel is 
written in the Spenserian stanza, and abounds in beautiful descriptions 
of nature, marking a very decided progress from the artificial to the 
natural school. The character of Edwin, the young minstrel, ardent 
in search for the beautiful and the true, is admirably portrayed; as is 
also that of the hermit who instructs the youth. The opening lines are 
very familiar : 

Ah, who can tell how hard it Is to climb 

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar ; 

and the description of the morning landscape has no superior in the 
language : 

But who the melodies of morn can tell? 

The wild brook babbling down the mountain side ; 
The lowing herd ; the sheepfold's simple bell ; 

The pipe of early shepherd dim descried 
In the lone valley. 

Beattie wrote numerous prose dissertations and essays, one of which 
was in answer to the infidel views of Hume — Essay on the Nature 



POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 35/ 

and Ifnmutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. 
Beattie was of an excitable and sensitive nature, and his polemical 
papers are valued rather for the beauty of their language, than for acute- 
ness of logic. 

William Falconer, 1 730-1 769: first a sailor in the merchant service, he 
afterwards entered the navy. He is chiefly known by his poem The 
Shipwreck, and for its astonishing connection with his own fortunes and 
fate. He was wrecked off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, be- 
fore he was eighteen; and this misfortune is the subject of his poem. 
Again, in 1760, he was cast away in the Channel. In 1 769, the Aurora 
frigate, of which he was the purser, foundered in Mozambique Chan- 
nels, and he, with all others on board, went down with her. The ex- 
cellence of his nautical directions and the vigor of his descriptions es- 
tablish the claims of his poem ; but it has the additional interest attach- 
ing to his curious experience — it is his autot^iography and his enduring 
monument. The picture of the storm is very fine ; but in the handling 
of .his verse there is more of the artificial than of the romantic school. 

William Shenstone, 17 14-1763 : his principal work is The Schoohnistress, 
a poem in the stanza of Spenser, which is pleasing from its simple and 
sympathizing description of the village school, kept by a dame; with 
the tricks and punishment of the children, and many little traits of rural 
life and character. It is pitched in so low a key that it commends itself 
to the world at large. Shenstone is equally known for his mania in 
landscape gardening, upon which he spent ail his means. His place, 
The Leasowes in Shropshire, has gained the greater notoriety through 
the descriptions of Dodsley and Goldsmith. The natural simplicity of 
The Schoolmistress allies it strongly to the romantic school, which was 
now about to appear. 

William Collins, 1720-1756: this unfortunate poet, who died at the early 
age of thirty-six, deserves particular mention for the delicacy of his 
fancy and the beauty of his diction. His Ode on the Passions is uni- 
versally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the bewil- 
derment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair 
to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the 
sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His Ode on the Death of 
Thomson is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the Dirge on Cymbeline. 
Everybody knows and admires the short ode beginning 

How sleep the brave who sink to rest 
By all their country's wishes blest I 



358 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

His Orie7ifal Eclogues please by the simplicity of the colloquies, the 
choice figures of speech, and the fine descriptions of nature. But of 
all his poems, the most finished and charming is the Ode to Evening. 
It contains thirteen four-lined stanzas of varied metre, and in blank 
verse so full of harmony that rhyme would spoil it. It presents a 
series of soft, dissolving views, and stands alone in English poetry, with 
claims sufficient to immortalize the poet, had he written nothing else. 
The latter part of his life was clouded by mental disorders, not unsug- 
gested to the reader by the pathos of many of his poems. Like Gray, 
he wrote little, but every line is of great merit. 
Henry Kirke White, 1 785-1 806: the son of a butcher, this gifted youth 
displayed, in his brief life, such devotion to study, and such powers of 
mind, that his friends could not but predict a brilliant future for him, 
had he lived. Nothing that he produced is of the highest order of 
poetic merit, but everything was full of promise. Of a weak constitu- 
tion, he could not bear the rigorous study which he prescribed to him- 
self, and which hastened his death. With the kind assistance of Mr. 
Capel Lofft and the poet Southey, he was enabled to leave the trade to 
which he had been apprenticed and go to Cambridge. His poems have 
most of them a strongly devotional cast. Among them are Gondoline, 
Clifton Grove, and the Christiad, in the last of which, like the swan, he 
chants his own death-song. His memory has been kept green by 
Southey's edition of his Re?nains, and by the beautiful allusion of By- 
^on to his genius and his fate in The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 
His sacred piece called The Star of Bethlehem has been a special fa- 
vorite : 

When marshalled on the nightly plain 
The glittering host bestud the sky. 

One star alone of all the train 

Can fix the sinner's wandering eye. 

Bishop Percy^ 1728-1811: Dr. Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, de- 
serves particular notice in a sketch of English Literature not so much 
for his own works, — although he was a poet, — as for his collection of 
ballads, made with great research and care, and published in 1765. By 
bringing before the world these remains of English songs and idyls, 
which lay scattered through the ages from the birth of the language, he 
showed England the true wealth of her romantic history, and influenced 
the writers of the day to abandon the artificial and reproduce the natu- 
ral, the simple, and the romantic. He. gave the impulse which pro- 
duced the minstrelsy of Scott and the simple stories of Wordsworth. 



POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 359 

Many of these ballads are descriptive of the border wars between Eng- 
land and Scotland; among the greatest favorites are Chevy Chase, The 
Battle of Otter burne, The Death of Douglas, and the story of Sir Patrick 
Spens. 
Anne Letitia Barbauld, 1 743-1 825: the hymns and poems of Mrs. Bar- 
bauld are marked by an adherence to the artificial school in fonn and 
manner; but something of feminine tenderness redeems them from the 
charge of being purely mechanical. Her Hymns in Prose for Children 
have been of value in an educational point of view ; and the tales com- 
prised in Evenings at Home are entertaining and instructive. Her Ode 
to Spring, which is an imitation of Collins's Ode to Evening, in the same 
measure and comprising the same number of stanzas, is her best poetic 
effort, and compares with Collins's piece as an excellent copy compares 
with the picture of a great master. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 



THE LATER DRAMA. 



The Progress of the Drama. I Cumberland. 
Garrick. Sheridan. 

Foote. George Colman. 



George Colman, the Younger. 
Other Dramatists and Humorists. 
Other Writers on Various Subjects. 



The Progress of the Drama. 

THE latter half of the eighteenth century, so marked, as 
we have seen, for manifold literary activity, is, in one 
phase of its history, distinctly represented by the drama. It 
was a very peculiar epoch in English annals. The accession 
of George III., in 1760, gave promise, from the character of 
the king and of his consort, of an exemplary reign. George 
III. was the first monarch of the house of Hanover who 
may be justly called an English king in interest and taste. 
He and his queen were virtuous and honest ; and their influ- 
ence was at once felt by a people in whom virtue and honesty 
are inherent, and whose consciences and tastes had been vio- 
lated by the evil examples of the former reigns. 

In 1762 George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, was 
born ; and as soon as he approached manhood, he displayed 
the worst features of his ancestral house : he was extravagant 
and debauched ; he threw himself into a violent opposition 
to his father : with this view he was at first a Whig, but 
afterwards became a Tory. He had also peculiar opportunities 
for exerting authority during the temporary fits of insanity 
which attacked the king in 1764, in 1788, and in 1804. At 
last, in 1 810, the king was so disabled from attending to his 

360 






THE .LATER DRAMA. 361 

duties, that the prince became regent, and assumed the reins 
of government, not to resign them again during his life. 

In speaking of the drama of this period, v/e should hardly, 
therefore, be wrong in calling it the Drama of the Regency. 
It held, however, by historic links, following the order of 
historic events, to the earlier drama. Shakspeare and his 
contemporaries had esta^blished the dramatic art on a firm 
basis. The frown of puritanism, in the polemic period, had 
checked its progress: with the restoration of Charles II., 
it had returned to rival the French stage in wicked plots and 
prurient scenes. With the better morals of the Revolution, 
and the popular progress which was made at the accession of 
the house of Hanover, the drama was modified : the older 
plays were revived in their original freshness ; a new and bet- 
ter taste was to be catered to ; and what of immorality re- 
mained was chiefly due to the influence of the Prince of 
Wales. Actors, so long despised, rose to importance as great 
artists. Garrick and Foote, and, later, Kemble, Kean, and 
Mrs. Siddons, were social personages in England. Peers 
married actresses, and enduring reputation was won by those 
who could display the passions and the affections to the life, 
giving flesh and blood and mind and heart to the inimitable 
creations of Shakspeare, 

It must be allowed that this power of presentment marks 
the age more powerfully than any claims of dramatic author- 
ship. The new play-writers did not approach Shakspeare ; 
but they represented their age, and repudiated the vices, in 
part at least, of their immediate predecessors. In them, 
too, is to be observed the change from the artificial to the 
romantic and natural. The scenes and persons in their plays 
are taken from the life around them, and appealed to the very 
models from which they were drawn. 

David Garrick. — First among these purifiers of the 
drama is David Garrick,, who was born in Lichfield, in 1716. 
31 



362 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

He v/as a pupil of Dr. Johnson, and came up with that dis- 
tinguished man to London, in 1735. The son of a captain in 
the Royal army, but thrown upon his own exertions, he first 
tried to gain a livelihood as a wine merchant ; but his fond- 
ness for the stage led him to become an actor, and in taking 
this step he found his true position. A man of respectable 
parts and scholarship, he wrote many agreeable pieces for the 
stage ; which, however, owed their success more to his accu- 
rate knowledge of the mise en scene, and to his own represen- 
tation of the principal characters, than to their intrinsic merits. 
His mimetic powers were great : he acted splendidly in all 
casts, excelling, perhaps, in tragedy ; and he, more than any 
actor before or since, has made the world thoroughly ac- 
quainted with Shakspeare. Dramatic authors courted him ', 
for his appearance in any new piece was almost an assurance 
of its success. 

Besides many graceful prologues, epigrams, and songs, he 
wrote, or altered, forty plays. Among these the following 
have the greatest merit : The Lying Valet, a farce founded on 
an old English comedy ; The Clandestine Afarriage, in which 
he was aided by the elder Colman ; (the character of Lord 
Ogleby he wrote for himself to personate;) Miss in her 
Teens, a very clever and amusing farce. He was charmingly 
natural in his acting; but he was accused of being theatrical 
when off the stage. In the words of Goldsmith : 

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; 
'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting. 

Garrick married a dancer, who made him an excellent wife. 
By his own exertions he won a highly respectable social posi- 
tion, and an easy fortune of ^140,000, upon which he re- 
tired from the stage. He died in London in 1779. 

In 1 83 1-2 his Private Correspondence with the Most Cele- 
brated Persons of his Time was published, and opened a rich 
field to the social historian. Among his correspondents were 



THE LATER DRAMA. 363 

Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Gibber, Sheridan, Burke, 
Wilkes, Junius, and Dr. Franklin. Thus Garrick catered 
largely to the history of his period^ as an actor and dramatic 
author, illustrating the stage ; as a reviver of Shakspeare, and 
as a correspondent of history. 

Samuel Foote. — Among the many English actors who 
have been distinguished for great powers of versatility in voice, 
feature, and manner, there is none superior to Foote. Bold 
and self-reliant, he was a comedian in every-day life ; and his 
ready wit and humor subdued Dr. Johnson, who had deter- 
mined to dislike him. He was born in 1722, at Truro, and 
educated at Oxford : he studied law, but his peculiar ap- 
titudes soon led him to the stage, where he became famous 
as a comic actor. Among his original pieces are The Patron^ 
The Devil on Two Stilts, The Diversions of the Moniiiig, 
Lindamira, and The Slajtderer. But his best play, which is 
a popular burlesque on parliamentary elections, is The Mayor 
of Garrat. He died in 1777, at Dover, while on his way to 
France for the benefit of his health. His plays present the 
comic phase of English history in his day. 

Richard Cumberland. — This accomplished man, who, 
in the words of Walter Scott, has given us "many powerful 
sketches of the age which has passed away," was born in 
1732, and lived to the ripe age of seventy-nine, dying in 
181 1. After receiving his education at Cambridge, he be- 
came secretary to Lord Halifax. His versatile pen produced, 
besides dramatic pieces, novels and theological treatises, il- 
lustrating the principal topics of the time. In his plays there 
is less of immorality than in those of his contemporaries. 
The West Indian, which was first put upon the stage in 1 7 7 1 , 
and which is still occasionally presented, is chiefly noticeable 
in that an Irishman and a West Indian are the principal char- 
acters,, and that he has not brought them into ridicule, as was 



364 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

common at the time, but has exalted them by their merits. 
The best of his other plays are The Jew, The Wheel of For- 
tune, and The Fashionable Lover, (joldsmith, in his poem 
Retaliation, says of Cumberland, referring to his greater 
morality and his human sympathy, 

Here Cnmberland lies, having acted his parts. 
The Terence of England, the mender of hearts; 
A flattering painter, who made it his care 
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are. 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan. — No man represents the 
Regency so completely as Sheridan. He was a statesman, a 
legislator, an orator, and a dramatist; and in social life a wit, 
a gamester, a spendthrift, and a debauchee. His manifold 
nature seemed to be always in violent ebullition. He was 
born in September, 1751, and was the son of Thomas Sheri- 
dan, the actor and lexicographer. His mother, Frances 
Sheridan, v/as also a writer of pla3S and novels. Educated at 
Harrow, he was there considered a dunce ; and when he grew 
to manhood, he plunged into dissipation, and soon made a 
stir in the London world by making a runaway match with 
Miss Linley, a singer, who was noted as one of the hand- 
somest women of the day. A duel w^ith one of her former 
admirers was the result. 
' As a dramatist, he began by presenting A Trip to Scar- 
borough, which was altered from Vanbrugh's Relapse ; but his 
fame was at once assured by his production, in 1775, of The 
Ditenna and The Rivals. The former is called an opera, 
but is really a comedy containing many songs : the plot is 
varied and entertaining ; but it is far inferior to l^he Rivals, 
which is based upon his own adventures, and is brimming 
with wit and humor. Mrs. Malaprop, Bob Acres, Sir Lucius 
O'Trigger, and the Absolutes, father and son, have been 
prime favorites upon the stage ever since. 

In 1777 he produced The School for Scandal, a caustic 



THE LATER DRAMA. 365 

satire on London society, which has no superior in genteel 
comedy. It has been said that the characters of Charles and 
Joseph Surface were suggested by the Tom Jones and Blifil 
of Fielding ; but, if this be true, the handling is so original 
and natural, that they are in no sense a plagiarism. Without 
the rippling brilliancy of T]ie Rivals, The School for Scandal 
is better sustained in scene and colloquy ; and in spite of 
some indelicacy, which is due to the age, the moral lesson is 
far more valuable. The satire is strong and instructive, and 
marks the great advance in social decorum over the former 
age. 

In 1779 appeared The Critic, a literary satire, in which the 
chief character is that of Sir Fretful Plagiary. 

Sheridan sat in parliament as member for Stafford. His first 
effort in oratory was a failure ; but by study he became one 
of the most effective popular orators of his day. His speeches 
lose by reading : he abounded in gaudy figures, and is not 
without bombast ; but his wonderful flow of words and his 
impassioned action dazzled his audience and kept it spell- 
bound. His oratory, whatever its faults, gained also the un- 
stinted praise of his colleagues and rivals in the art. Of his 
great speech in the trial of Warren Hastings, in 1788, Fox 
declared that "ail he had ever heard, all he had ever read, 
when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished 
like vapor before the sun." Burke called it ''the most as- 
tonishing effort of eloquence, argumicnt, and wit united, of 
which there was any record or tradition;" and Pitt said 
''that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient or modern 
times." 

Sheridan was for some time the friend and comrade of 
the Prince Regent, in wild courses which were to the taste 
of both ; but this friendship was dissolved, and the famous 
dramatist ?'-i orator sank gradually in the social scale, until 
he had sounded the depths of human misery. He was deeply 
in debt; he obtained money under mean and false pretences; 
31* 



366 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

he was drunken and debauched; and even death did not 
bring rest. He died in July, 1816. His corpse was arrested 
for debt, and could not be buried until the debt was paid. 
In his varied brilliancy and in his fatal debauchery, his char- 
acter stands forth as the completest type of the period of the 
Regency. Many memoirs have been written, among which 
those of his friend Moore, and his granddaughter the Hon. 
Mrs. Norton, although they unduly palliate his faults, are the 
best. 

George Colman. — Among the respectable dramatists of 
this period who exerted an influence in leading the public 
taste away from the witty and artificial schools of the Restora- 
tion, the two Colmans deserve mention. George Colman, 
the elder, was born in Florence in 1733, but began his educa- 
tion at Westminster School, from which he was removed to 
Oxford. After receiving his degree he studied law ; but soon 
abandoned graver study to court the comic muse. ' His first 
piece, Polly Honeycomb, was produced in 1760; but his repu- 
tation was established by The Jealous Wife, suggested by a 
scene in Fielding's Tom Jones. Besides many humorous mis- 
cellanies, most of which appeared in The St. James^ Chrojiicle^ 
— a magazine of which he was the proprietor, — he translated 
Terence, and produced more than thirty dramatic pieces, 
some of which are still presented upon the stage. The best 
of these is The Clandestine Marriage., which was the joint 
production of Garrick and himself. Of this play, Davies says 
''that no dramatic piece, since the days of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, had been written by two authors, in which wit, 
fancy, and humor were so happily blended." In 1768 he 
became one of the proprietors of the Covent Garden Theatre: 
in 1789 his mind became affected, and he remained a mental 
invalid until his death in 1794. 

George Colman, the Younger. — This writer was the 



THE LATER DRAMA. 36/ 

son of George Colman, and was born in 1762. Like his 
father, he was educated at Westminster and Oxford ; but he 
was removed from tlie university before receiving his degree, 
and was graduated at King's College, Aberdeen. He inher- 
ited an enthusiasm for the drama and considerable skill as a 
dramatic author. In 1787 he produced Likle mid Yaf^ico, 
founded upon the pathetic story of Addison, in The Spectator. 
In 1796 appeared The Iron Chest ; this was followed, in 1797, 
by The Heir at Law and John Bull. To him the world is 
indebted for a large number of stock pieces which still ap- 
pear at our theatres. In 1802 he published a volume entitled 
Broad Grins, which was an expansion of a previous volume 
of comic scraps. This is full of frolic and humor : among 
the verses in the style of Peter Pindar are the well-known 
sketches The Newcastle Apothecary, (who gave the direc- 
tion with his medicine, "When taken, to be well shaken,") 
and Lodgings for Single Gentlemen. 

The author's fault is his tendency to farce, which robs his 
comedies of dignity. He assumed the cognomen the younger 
because, he said, he did not wish his father's memory to suf- 
fer for his faults. He died in 1836. 

Other Humorists and Dramatists of the Period. 

John Wolcot, 1738-1819: his pseudonym -^zs Peter Pindar. He was a 
satirist as well as a humorist, and was bold in lampooning the promi- 
nent men of his time, not even sparing the king. The world of litera- 
ture knows him best by his humorous poetical sketches, The Apple- 
Diimplings and the Kmg, The Razor-Seller, The Pilgrims and the Peas, 
and many others, 

Hannah More, 1745-1833: this lady had a flowing, agreeable style, but 
produced no great work. She wrote for her age and pleased it; but 
posterity disregards what she has written. Her principal plays are: 
Percy, presented in 1777, and a tragedy entitled The Fatal Falsehood. 
She was a poet and a novelist also; but in neither part did she rise 
above mediocrity. In 1782 appeared her volume of Sacred Dramas. 
Her best novel is entitled Ccelebs in Search of a Wife, comprehendiitg 



368 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Observations on Dojuestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals. Her 
greatest merit is that she always inculcated pure morals and religion, 
and thus aided in improving the society of her age. Something of her 
fame is also due to the rare appearance, up to this time, of women in 
the fields of literature; so that her merits are indulgently exaggerated. 
jfoamia Baillie, 1762-1851 : this lady, the daughter of a Presbyterian 
divine, wrote graceful verses, but is principally known by her numerous 
plays. Among these, which include thirteen Plays on the Passions, 
and thirteen Miscellaneous Plays, those best known are De Montfort 
and Basil — both tragedies, which have received high praise from Sir 
"Walter Scott. Her Ballads and Metrical Legends are all spirited and 
excellent; and her ^;«;z^ breathe the very spirit of devotion. Very 
popular during her life, and still highly estimated by literary critics, her 
works have given place to newer and more favorite authors, and have 
already lost interest with the great world of readers. 

Other Writers on Various Subjects, 

Thomas Wartoti, 1 728-1790: he was Professor of Poetry and of Ancient 
History at Oxford, and, for the last five years of his life, poet-laureate. 
The student of English Literature is greatly indebted to him for his 
History 0/ English Poetry, which he brings down to the early part of 
the seventeenth century. No one before him had attempted such a task; 
and, although his work is rather a rare mass of valuable materials than 
a well articulated history, it is of great value for its collected facts, and 
for its suggestions as to where the scholar may pursue his studies 
farther. 

Joseph Waj'ton, 1 722-1 800: a brother of Thomas Warton ; he published 
translations and essays and poems. Among the translations was that 
of the Eclogues aiul Georgics of Virgil, which is valued for its exactness 
and perspicuity, 

Frances Burney, (Madame D'Arblay,) 1752-1840: the daughter of Dr. 
Burney, a musical composer. While yet a young girl, she astonished 
herself and the world by her novel of Evelina, which at once took rank 
among the standard fictions of the day. It is in the style of Richardson, 
but more truthful in the delineation of existing manners, and in the ex- 
pression of sentiment. She afterwards published Cecilia and seveial 
other tales, which, although excellent, were not as good as the first. 
She led an almost menial life, as one of the ladies in waiting upon 
Queen Charlotte; but the genuine fame achieved by her writings in 
some degree relieved the sense of thraldom, from which she happily 



THE LATER DRAMA 



369 



escaped with a pension. The novels of Madame D'Arblay are the in- 
termediate step between the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smol- 
lett, and the Waverly novels of Walter Scott. They are entirely free from 
any taint of immorality ; and they were among the first feminine eftbrts 
that were received with enthusiasm: thus it is that, without being of the 
first order of merit, they mark a distinct era in English letters. 

Edmund Burke, I'j 2,0-1'] g"] : he was born in Dublin, and educated at 
Trinity College. He studied law, but soon found his proper sphere in 
public life. He had brilliant literary gifts ; but his fame is more that 
of a statesman and an orator, than an author. Prominent in parlia- 
ment, he took noble ground in favor of American liberty in our contest 
with the mother country, and uttered speeches which have remained as 
models of forensic eloquence. His greatest oratorical efforts were his 
famous speeches as one of the committee of impeachment in the case 
of Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India. ^Yhatever may be 
thought of Hastings and his administration, the famous trial has given 
to English oratory some of its noblest specimens; and the people of 
England learned more of their empire in India from the learned, bril- 
liant, and exhaustive speeches of Burke, than they could have learned 
in any other way. The greatest of his written works is : RefectioJis on 
the Revolution in Fratice, written to warn England to avoid the causes 
of such colossal evil. In 1756 he had published his Inquiry ijito the 
Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. This has been vari- 
ously criticized; and, although written with vigor of thought and bril- 
liancy of style, has now taken its place among the speculations of theory, 
and not as establishing permanent canons of ccsthetical science. His 
work entitled The Viiidi cation of Natural Society, by a late ?ioi>le writer, 
is a successful attempt to overthrow the infidel system of Lord Boling- 
broke, by applying it to civil society, and thus showing that it proved 
too much — " that if the abuses of or evils sometimes connected with 
religion invalidate its authority, then every institution, however bene- 
ficial, must be abandoned." Burke's style is peculiar, and, in another 
writer, would be considered pompous and pedantic; but it so expresses 
the grandeur and dignity of the man, that it escapes this criticism. His 
learning, his private worth, his high aims and incorruptible faith in pub- 
lic station, the dignity of his statesmanship, and the power of his ora- 
tory, constitute ^Ir. Burke as one of the noblest characters of any Eng- 
lish period ; and, although his literary reputation is not equal to his 
pohtical fame, his accomplishments in the field of letters are worthy of 
admiration and honorable mention. 

Hugh Blair, 1718-1800: a Presbyterian divine in Edinburgh, Dr. Blair 

Y 



3/0 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

deserves special mention for his lectures on Rhetoric and Belles- Lettres^ 
which for a long time constituted the prmcipal text-book on those sub- 
jects in our schools and colleges, A better understanding of the true 
scope of rhetoric as a science has caused this work to be superseded by 
later text-books. Blair's lectures treat principally of style and literary 
criticism, and are excellent for their analysis of some of the best authors, 
and for happy illustrations from their works, Blair wrote many elo- 
quent sermons, which were published, and was one of the strong cham- 
pions of Macpherson, in the controversy concerning the poems of Os- 
sian. He occupied a high place as a literary critic during his life, 
William Paley, 1 743-1 805 : a clergyman of the Established Church, he 
rose to the dignity of Archdeacon and Chancellor of Carlisle. At first 
thoughtless and idle, he was roused from his unprofitable life by the 
earnest warnings of a companion, and became a severe student and a 
vigorous writer on moral and religious subjects. Among his numer- 
ous writings, those principally valuable are : Horce Patdincz, and A 
View of the Evidences of Christianity — the former setting forth the life 
and character of St. Paul, and the latter being a clear exposition of 
the truth of Christianity, which has long served as a manual of aca- 
demic instruction. His treatise on Natural Theology is, in the words of 
Sir James Mackintosh, " the wonderful work of a man who, after sixty, 
had studied anatomy in order to write it." Later investigations of 
science have discarded some of XrA facts ; but the handling of the subject 
and the array of arguments are the work of a skilful and powerful hand. 
He wrote, besides, a work on Moral and Political Philosophy, and 
numerous sermons. His theory of morals is, that whatever is expedient 
is right ; and thus he bases our sense of duty upon the ground of the 
production of the greatest amount of happiness. This low view has 
been successfully refuted by later writers on moral science. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: SCOTT. 



Walter Scott. 

Translations and Minstrelsy. 
The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
Other Poems. 



The Waverley Novels. 
Particular Mention. 
Pecuniary Troubles. 
His Manly Purpose. 



Powers Overtasked. 
Fruitless Journey. 
Return and Death. 
His Fame. 



THE transition school, as we have seen, in returning to 
nature, had redeemed the pastoral, and had cultivated 
sentiment at the expense of the epic. As a slight reaction, 
and yet a progress, and as influenced by the tales of modern 
fiction, and also as subsidizing the antiquarian lore and taste 
of the age, there arose a school of poetry which is best repre- 
sented by its Tales in verse ; — some treating subjects of the 
olden time, some laying their scenes in distant countries, and 
some describing home incidents of the simplest kind. They 
were all minor epics : such were the poetic stories of Scott, 
the Lalla Rookh of Moore, llie Bride and The Giaour of 
Byron, and The Village and The Borough of Crabbe; all of 
which mark the taste and the demand of the period. 

Walter Scott. — First in order of the new romantic 
poets was Scott, alike renowned for his Lays and for his 
wonderful prose fictions ; at once the most equable and the 
most prolific of English authors. 

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of August, 
1 771. His father was a writer to the signet ; his mother was 
Anne Rutherford, the daughter of a medical professor in the 
University of Edinburgh. His father's family belonged to 
the clan Buccleugh. Lame from his early childhood, and 

371 



372 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

thus debarred the more active pleasures of children, his im- 
agination was unusually vigorous ; and he took special pleas- 
ure in the many stories, current at the time, of predatory 
warfare, border forays, bogles, warlocks, and second sight. 
He spent some of his early days in the country, and thus be- 
came robust and healthy ; although his lameness remained 
throughout life. He was educated in Edinburgh, at the High 
School and the university ; and, although not noted for excel- 
lence as. a scholar, he exhibited precocity in verse, and de- 
lighted his companions by his readiness in reproducing old 
stories or improving new ones. After leaving the university 
he studied law, and ranged himself in politics as a Conserva- 
tive or Tory. 

Although never an accurate classical scholar, he had a su- 
perficial knowledge of several languages, and was an industri- 
ous collector of old ballads and relics of the antiquities of 
his country. He was, however, better than a scholar ; — 
he had genius, enthusiasm, and industry : he could create 
character, adapt incident, and, in picturesque description, he 
was without a rival. 

During the rumors of the invasion of Scotland by the 
French, which he has treated with such comical humor in The 
Antiquary, his lameness did not prevent his taking part with 
the volunteers, as quartermaster — a post given him to spare 
him the fatigue and rough service of the ranks. The French 
did not come ; and Scott returned to his studies with a budget 
of incident for future use. 

Translations and Minstrelsy. — The study of the Ger- 
man language was then almost a new thing, even among edu- 
cated people in England ; and Scott made his first public 
essay in the form of translations from the German. Among 
these were versions of the Erl Kojiig of Goethe, and the 
Lenore and The Wild Huntsman of Biirger, which appeared 
in 1796. In 1797 he rendered into English Otho of Wittels- 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: SCOTT. 373 

bach by Steinburg, and in 1799 Goethe's tragedy, Gotz von 
Berlichingejt. These were the trial efforts of his '' 'prentice 
hand," which predicted a coming master. 

On the 24th of December, 1797, he married Miss Carpen- 
ter, or Charpentier, a lady of French parentage, and retired 
to a cottage at Lass wade, where he began his studies, and 
cherished his literary aspirations in earnest and for life. 

In 1799 he was so fortunate as to receive the appointment 
of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, with a salary of ^£"300 per annum. 
His duties were not onerous : he had ample time to scour the 
country, ostensibly in search of game, and really in seeking 
for the songs and traditions of Scotland, border ballads, and 
tales, and in storing his fancy with those picturesque views 
which he was afterwards to describe so well in verse and 
prose. In 1802 he was thus enabled to present to the world 
his first considerable work. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
Boi-der^ containing many new ballads which he had collected, 
with very valuable local and historical notes. This was fol- 
lowed, in 1804, by the metrical romance oi Sir Tristrem, the 
original of which was by Thomas of Ercildoune, of the thir- 
teenth century, known as Thomas the Rhymer : it was he who 
dreamed on Huntley bank that he met the Queen of Elfland, 

And, till seven years were gone and past, 
True Thomas on earth was never seen. 

The reputation acquired by these productions led the world to 
expect something distinctly original and brilliant from his 
pen ; a hope which was at once realized. 

The Lay of the Last Minstrel. — In 1805 appeared his 
first great poem. The Lay of the Last Minstrel, which imme- 
diately established his fame : it was a charming presentation 
of the olden time to the new. It originated in a request of 
the Countess of Dalkeith that he would write a ballad on the 
legend of Gilpin Horner. The picture of the last minstrel, 
32 



374 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

*' infirm and old," fired by remembrance as he begins to tell 
an old-time story of Scottish valor, is vividly drawn. The 
bard is supposed to be the last of his fraternity, and to have 
lived down to 1690. The tale, mixed of truth and fable, is 
exceedingly interesting. The octo-syllabic measure, with an 
occasional line of three feet, to break the monotony, is purely 
minstrelic, and reproduces the effect of the t7'oubadoiirs and 
trouvh'es. The wizard agency of Gilpin Horner's brood, 
and the miracle at the tomb of Michael Scott, are by no 
means out of keeping with the minstrel and the age of which 
he sings. The dramatic effects are good, and the descriptions 
very vivid. The poem was received with great enthusiasm, 
and rapidly passed through several editions. One element of 
its success is modestly and justly stated by the author in his 
introduction to a later edition : " The attempt to return to a 
more simple and natural style of poetry was likely to be wel- 
comed at a time when the public had become tired of heroic 
hexameters, with all the buckram and binding that belong to 
them in modern days." 

With an annual income of ^Tiooo, and an honorable am- 
bition, Scott worked his new literary mine with great vigor. 
He saw not only fame but wealth within his reach. He en- 
tered into a silent partnership with the publisher, James Bal- 
lantyne, which was for a long time lucrative, by reason of the 
unprecedented sums he received for his works. In 1806 he 
was appointed to the reversion — on the death of the incum- 
bent — of the clerkship of the Court of Sessions, a place worth 
^£1300 per annum. 

Other Poems. — In 1808, before Tlie Lay had lost its 
freshness, Marmion appeared : it was kindred in subject and 
form,- and was received with equal favor. The Lady of the 
Lake, the most popular of these poems, was published in 
1810; and with it his poetical talent culminated. The later 
poems were not equal to any of those mentioned, although 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: SCOTT. 3/5 

they were not without many beauties and individual excel- 
lences. 

The Vision of Do7i Roderick, which appeared in 1811, is 
founded upon the legend of a visit made by one of the Gothic 
kings of Spain to an enchanted cavern near Toledo. * Rokeby 
was published in 1812 ; The Bridal of Ti'iermain in 1813 ; The 
Lord of the Isles, founded upon incidents in the life of Bruce, 
in 1815 ; and Harold the Dauntless in 1817. With the decline 
of his poetic power, manifest to himself, he retired from the field 
of poetry, but only to appear upon another and a grander field 
with astonishing brilliancy: it was the domain of the histor- 
ical romance. Such, however, was the popular estimate of 
his poetry, that in 181 3 the Prince Regent offered him the 
position of poet-laureate, which was gratefully and wisely de- 
clined. 

Just at this time the new poets came forth, in his own style, 
and actuated by his example and success. He recognized in 
Byron, Moore, Crabbe, and others, genius and talent; and, 
with his generous spirit, exaggerated their merits by depreci- 
ating his own, which he compared to cairngorms beside the 
real jewels of his competitors. The mystics, following the 
lead of the Lake poets, were ready to increase the deprecia- 
tion. It soon became fashionable to speak of The Lay, and 
Marmion, and The Lady of the Lake as spirited little stories, 
not equal to Byron's, and not to be mentioned beside the oc- 
cult philosophy of Thalaba and gentle egotism of The Pre- 
lude. That day is passed : even the critical world returns to 
its first fancies. In the words of Carlyle, a great balance- 
striker of literary fame, speaking in 1838: ''It were late 
in the day to vvTite criticisms on those metrical romances ; at 
the same time, the great popularity they had seems natural 
enough. In the first place, there was the indisputable impress 
of worth, of genuine human force in them. . . Pictures were 
actually painted and presented ; human emotions conceived 
and sympathized with. Considering that wretched Dellacrus- 



37^ • ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

can and other vamping up of wornout tattlers was the staple 
article then, it may be granted that Scott's excellence was 
superior and supreme." Without preferring any claim to 
epic grandeur, or to a rank among the few great poets of the 
first class, Scott is entitled to the highest eminence in min- 
strelic power. He is the great modern troubadour. His 
descriptions of nature are simple and exquisite. There is 
nothing in this respect more beautiful than the opening of 
The Lady of the Lake. His battle-pieces live and resound 
again : what can be finer than Flodden field in Marmioii, and 
The Battle of Beal and Duine in The Lady of the Lake ? 

His love scenes are at once chaste, impassioned, and ten- 
der; and his harp songs and battle lyrics are unrivalled in 
harmony. And, besides these merits, he gives us everywhere 
glimpses of history, which, before his day, were covered by the 
clouds of ignorance, and which his breath was to sweep away. 

Such are his claims as the first of the new romantic poets. 
We might here leave him, to consider his prose works in 
another connection ; but it seems juster to his fame to con- 
tinue and complete a sketch of his life, because all its parts 
are of connected interest. The poems were a grand proem 
to the novels. 

While he was achieving fame by his poetry, and reaping 
golden rewards as well as golden opinions, he was also ambi- 
tious to establish a family name and estate. To this end, he 
bought a hundred acres of land on the banks of the Tweed, 
near Melrose Abbey, and added to these from time to time 
by the purchase of adjoining properties. Here he built 
a great mansion, which became famous as Abbotsford : he 
called it one of his air-castles reduced to solid stone and 
mortar. Here he played the part of a feudal proprie- 
tor, and did the honors for Scotland to distinguished men 
from all quarters : his hospitality was generous and un- 
bounded. 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: SCOTT. 37/ 

The Waverley Novels. — As early as 1805, while pro- 
ducing his beautiful poems, he had tried his hand upon a story 
in prose, based upon the stirring events in 1745, resulting in 
the fatal battle of Culloden, which gave a death-blow to the 
cause of the Stuarts, and to their attempts to regain the crown. 
Dissatisfied with the effort, and considering it at that time less 
promising than poetry, he had thrown the manuscript aside 
in a desk with some old fishing-tackle. There it remained 
undisturbed for eight years. With the decline of his poetic 
powers, he returned to the former notion of writing historical 
fiction ; and so, exhuming his manuscript, he modified and 
finished it, and presented it anonymously to the world in 
1814. He had at first proposed the title of Waverley, or ' Tis 
Fifty Years Since, which was afterwards altered to ' T is 
Sixty Years Since. This, the first of his splendid series of 
fictions, which has given a name to the whole series, is by 
no means the best ; but it was good and novel enough to 
strike a chord in the popular heart at once. Its delineations 
of personal characters already known to history were mas- 
terly ; its historical pictures were in a new and striking style 
of art. There were men yet living to whom he could appeal 
— men who had been out vn the '45, who had seen Charles 
Edward and many of the originals of the author's heroes 
and heroines. In his researches and wanderings, he had im- 
bibed the very spirit of Scottish life and history ; and the 
Waverley novels are among the most striking literary types 
and expounders of history. 

Particular iSIention, — In 1815, before half the reading 
world had delighted themselves with Waverley, his rapid pen 
had produced Guy Mannering, a story of English and Scot- 
tish life, superior to Waverley in its original descriptions and 
more general interest. He is said to have written it in six 
weeks at Christmas time. The scope of this volume will not 
permit a critical examination of the Waverley novels. The 
32* 



37^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

world knows them almost by heart. In The Antiquary, which 
appeared in 1816, we have a rare delineation of local man- 
ners, the creation of dislinct characters, and a humorous de- 
scription of the sudden arming of volunteers in fear of inva- 
sion by the French. The Antiquai-y was a free portrait or 
sketch of Mr. George Constable, filled in perhaps uncon- 
sciously from the author's own life ; for he, no less than his 
friend, delighted in collecting relics, and in studying out the 
lines, praetoria, and general castrametation of the Roman 
armies. Andrew Gemmels was the original of that Edie 
Ochiltree who was bold enough to dispute the antiquary's 
more learned assertions. 

In the same year, 1816, was published the first series of 
The Tales of 77iy Landlord, containing The Black Divai-f 2cc\d, 
Old Mortality, both valuable as contributions to Scottish his- 
tory. The former is not of much literary merit ; and the 
author was so little pleased with it, that he brought it to a 
hasty conclusion : the latter is an extremely animated sketch 
of the sufferings of the Covenanters at the hands of Grahame 
of Claverhouse, with a fairer picture of that redoubted com- 
mander than the Covenanters have drawn. Rob Roy, the best 
existing presentation of Highland life and manners, appeared 
in 1817. Thus Scott's prolific pen, like nature, produced 
annuals. In 1818 appeared The Heart of Mid-Lothiaji, that 
touching story of Jeanie and Effie Deans, which awakens 
the warmest sympathy of every reader, and teaches to succes- 
sive generations a moral lesson of great significance and 
power. 

In 1 8 19 he wrote The Bride of Lammermoor, the story of 
a domestic tragedy, which warns the world that outraged na- 
ture will sometimes assert herself in fury; a story so popular 
that it has been since arranged as an Italian opera. With 
that came The Legend of Mo ntj-ose, another historic sketch of 
great power, and especially famous for the character of Major 
Dugald Dalgetty, soldier of fortune and pedant of Marischal 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY*. SCOTT. 3/9 

College, Aberdeen. The year 1819 also beheld the appear- 
ance of Ivanhoe, which many consider the best of the series. 
It describes rural England during the regency of John, the 
romantic return of Richard Lion-heart, the glowing embers 
of Norman and Saxon strife, and the story of the Templars. 
His portraiture of the Jev/ess Rebecca is one of the fmest in 
the Waverley Gallery. 

The next year, 1820, brought forth The Monaste7j , the 
least popular of the novels thus far produced ; and, as Scott 
tells us, on the principle of sending a second arrow to find 
one that was lost, he wrote The Abbot, a sequel, to which we 
are indebted for a masterly portrait of Mary Stuart in her 
prison of Lochleven. The Abbot, to some extent, redeemed 
and sustained its weaker brother. In this same year Scott was 
created a baronet, in recognition of his great services to Eng- 
lish Literature and history. The next five years added worthy 
companion-novels to the marvellous series. Kenilworth is 
founded upon the visit of Queen Elizabeth to her favorite 
Leicester, in that picturesque palace in Warwickshire, and 
contains that beautiful and touching picture of Amy Robsart. 
The Pirate is a story the scene of which is laid in Shetland, 
and the material for which he gathered in a pleasure tour 
among those islands. Li The Fortunes of Nigel, London 
life during the reign of James I. is described; and it contains 
life-like portraits of that monarch, of his unfortunate son, 
Prince Charles, and of Buckingham. Peveril of the Peak 
is a story of the time of Charles IL, which is not of equal 
merit v/ith the other novels. Quentin Durward, one of the 
very best, describes the strife between Louis XL of France 
and Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and gives full-length his- 
toric portraits of these princes. The scene of St. Ronan' s 
Well is among the English lakes in Cumberland, and the 
story describes the manners of the day at a retired watering- 
place. Red Gauntlet is a curious narrative connected with 
one of the latest attempts of Charles Edward — abortive at 



380 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the outset — to effect a rising in Scotland. In 1825 appeared 
his Tales of the Crusaders, comprising The Betrothed and 
The Talisman, of which the latter is the more popular, as it 
describes with romantic power the deeds of Richard and his 
comrades in the second crusade. 

A glance at this almost tabular statement will show the 
scope and versatility of his mind, the historic range of his 
studies, the fertility of his fancy, and the rapidity of his pen. 
He had attained the height of fame and happiness ; his suc- 
cess had partaken of the miraculous ; but misfortune came to 
mar it all, for a time. 

Pecuniary Troubles. — In the financial crash of 1825-6, 
he was largely involved. As a silent partner in the publish- 
ing house of the Ballantynes, and as connected with them in 
the affairs of Constable & Co., he found himself, by the fail- 
ure of these houses, legally liable to the amount of ^117,000. 
To relieve himself, he might have taken the benefit of the 
bankrupt law ; or, such was his popularity, that his friends 
desired to raise a subscription to cover the amount of his in- 
debtedness; but he was now to show by his conduct that, if 
the author was great, the man was greater. He refused all 
assistance, and even rejected general sympathy. He deter- 
mined to relieve himself, to pay his debts, or die in the effort. 
He left Abbotsford, and took frugal lodgings in Edinburgh; 
curtailed all his expenses, and went to work — which was 
over-work — not for fame, but for guineas; and he gained 
both. 

His first novel after this, and the one which was to test the 
practicability of his plan, was Woodstock, a tale of the troub- 
lous times of the Civil War, in the last chapter of which he 
draws the picture of the restored Charles coming in peaceful 
procession to his throne. This he wrote in three months; 
and for it he received upwards of ^8000. With this and 
the proceeds of his succeeding works, he was enabled to pay 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: SCOTT. 38I 

over to his creditors the large sum of p/^70,000 ; a feat unpar- 
alleled in the history of literature. But the anxiety and the 
labor were too much even for his powerful constitution : he 
died in his heroic attempt. 

His Manly Purpose. — More for money than for reputa- 
tion, he compiled hastily, and from partial and incomplete 
material, a Life of Napoleon Bo7iaparte, which appeared in 
1827. The style is charming and the work eminently reada- 
ble; but it contains many faults, is by no means unprejudiced, 
and, as far as pure truth is concerned, is, in parts, almost as 
much of a romance as any of the Waverley novels ; but, for 
the first two editions, he received the enormous sum of 
;£i 8,000. The work was accomplished in the space of one 
year. Among the other task-work books were the two series 
of The Chronicles of the Canongate (1827 and 1828), the lat- 
ter of which contains the beautiful story of St. Valentine' s 
Day, or The Fair Maid of Fej-th. It is written in his finest 
vein, especially in those chapters which describe the famous 
Battle of the Clans. In 1829 appeared AjtJte of Geierstein^ 
another story presenting the figure of Charles of Burgundy, 
and his defeat and death in the battle with the Swiss at 
Nancy. 

Powers Overtasked. — And now new misfortunes were 
to come upon him. In 1826 he had lost his wife: his sor- 
rows weighed upon him, and his superhuman exertions were 
too much, for his strength. In 1829 he was seized with a 
nervous attack, accompanied by hemorrhages of a peculiar 
kind. In February, 1830, a slight paralysis occurred, from 
which he speedily recovered ; this was soon succeeded by 
another; and it was manifest that his mind was giving way. 
His last novel. Count Robert of Paris, was begun in 1830, as 
one of a fourth series of The Tales of My Landlord: it bears 
manifest marks of his failing powers, but is of value for the 



382 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

historic stores which it draws from the Byzantine historians, 
and especially from the unique work of Anna.Comnena : " I 
almost wish," he said, "I had named it Anna Comnena." 
A slight attack of apoplexy in November, 1830, was followed 
by a severer one in the spring of 1831. Even then he tried 
to write, and was able to produce Castle Dangerous. With 
that the powerful pen ended its marvellous work. The manly 
spirit still chafed that his debts were not paid, and could not 
be, by the labor of his hands. 

Fruitless Journey. — In order to divert his mind, and, 
as a last chance for health, a trip to the Mediterranean was 
projected. The Barham frigate was placed by the govern- 
ment at his disposal ; and he wandered with a party of friends 
to Malta, Naples, Pompeii, Paestum, and Rome. But feel- 
ing the end approaching, he exclaimed, "Let us to Abbots- 
ford: " for the final hour he craved \\\q. grata quies patrice ; 
to which an admiring world has added the remainder of the 
verse — sed et oninis tei'ra sepulchriun. It was. not a moment 
too soon : he travelled northward to the Rhine, down that 
river by boat, and reached London "totally exhausted; " 
thence, as soon as he could be moved, he was taken to Ab- 
botsford. 

Return and Death. — There he lingered from July to 
September, and died peacefully on the 21st of the latter 
month, surrounded by his family and lulled to repose by the 
rippling of the Tweed. Among the noted dead of 1832, in- 
cluding Goethe, Cuvier, Crabbe, and Mackintosh, he was the 
most distinguished ; and all Scotland and all the civilized 
world mourned his loss. 

His Fame. — At Edinburgh a colossal monument has been 
erected to his memory, w^ithin which sits his marble figure. 
Numerous other memorial columns are found in other cities, 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: SCOTT. 383 

but all Scotland is his true monument, every province and 
town of which he has touched with his magic pen. Indeed, 
Scotland may be said to owe to him a new existence. In the 
words of Lord Meadowbank, — who presided at the Theatrical 
Fund dinner in 1827, and who there made the first public 
announcement of the authorship of the Waverley novels, — 
Scott was *' the mighty magician who rolled back the current 
of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men 
and manners of days which have long since passed away. . . 
It is he who has conferred a ne\y reputation on our national 
character, and bestowed on Scotland an imperishable name." 

Besides his poetry and novels, he wrote very much of a 
miscellaneous character for the reviews, and edited the works 
of the poets with valuable introductions and congenial biog- 
raphies. Most of his fictions are historical in plot and per- 
sonages ; and those which deal with Scottish subjects are 
enriched by those types of character, those descriptions of 
manners — national and local — and those peculiarities of lan- 
guage, which give them additional and more useful historical 
value. It has been justly said that, by his masterly handling 
of historical subjects, he has taught the later historians how 
to write, how to give vivid and pictorial effects to what was 
before a detail of chronology or a dry schedule of philoso- 
phy. His critical powers may be doubted : he was too kind 
and genial for a critic ; and in reading contemporary authors 
seems to have endued their inferior works with something of 
his own fancy. 

The Zt/e of Scott, by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, is one 
of the most complete and interesting biographies in the lan- 
guage. In it the student will find a list of all his works, with 
the dates of their production ; and will wonder that an author 
who was so rapid and so prolific could write so much that 
was of the highest excellence. If not the greatest genius of 
his age, he was its greatest literary benefactor ; and it is for 
this reason that we have given so much space to the record 
of his life and works. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

..lE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: BYRON AND MOORE. 



Early Life of Byron. i Estimate of his Poetry. 
Chllde Harold and Eastern Tales. Thomas Moore. 
Unhappy Marriage. Anacreon. 

Philhellenism and Death. 1 Later Fortunes. 



Lalla Rookh. 

His Diary. 

His Rank as Poet. 



IN immediate succession after Scott comes the name of 
Byron. They were both great lights of their age ; but 
the former may be compared to a planet revolving in regu- 
lated and beneficent beauty through an unclouded sky; while 
the latter is more like a comet whose lurid light came flash- 
ing upon the sight in wild and threatening career. 

Like Scott, Byron was a prolific poet ; and he owes to 
Scott the general suggestion and much of the success of his 
tales in verse. His powers of description were original and 
great : he adopted the new romantic tone, while in his more 
studied works he was an imitator and a champion of a former 
age, and a contemner of his own. 

Early Life of Byron. — The Honorable George Gordon 
Byron, afterwards Lord Byron, was born in London on the 
22d of January, 1788. While he was yet an infant, his 
father — Captain Byron — a dissipated man, deserted his 
mother ; and she went with her child to live upon a slender 
pittance at Aberdeen. She was a woman of peculiar disposi- 
tion, and was unfortunate in the training of her son. She 
alternately petted and quarrelled with him, and taught hira 
to emulate her irregularities of temper. On account of an 
accident at his birth, he had a malformation in one of his 

384 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY. 385 

feet, which, producing a slight limp in his gait through life, 
rendered his sensitive nature quite unhappy, the signs of 
which are to be discerned in his drama, The Defo?ined Trans- 
formed, From the age of five years he went to school at 
Aberdeen, and very early began to exhibit traits of generos- 
ity, manliness, and an imperious nature : he also displayed 
great quickness in those studies which pleased his fancy. 

In 1798, when he was eleven years old, his grand-uncle, 
William, the fifth Lord Byron, died, and was succeeded in the 
title and estates by the young Gordon Byron, who was at 
once removed with his mother to Newstead Abbey. In 1801 
he was sent to Harrow, where he was well esteemed by his 
comrades, but was not considered forward in his studies. 

He seems to have been of a susceptible, nature, for, while 
still a boy, he fell in love several times. His third experience 
in this way was undoubtedly the strongest of his whole life. 
The lady was Miss Mary Chaworth, who did not return his 
affection. His last interview with her he has powerfully de- 
scribed in his poem called The Dream. From Harrow he 
went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lived an idle 
and self-indulgent life, reading discursiveh", but not studying 
the prescribed course. As early as November, 1806, before 
he was nineteen, he published his first volume. Poems on Va- 
rious Occasions, for private distribution, which was soon after 
enlarged and altered, and presented to the public as Hours 
of Idle7iess, a Se7'ies of Poems Original and Translated, by 
George Gordon, Lord Byron, A Minor. These productions, 
although by no means equal to his later poems, are not with- 
out merit, and did not deserve the exceedingly severe criti- 
cism they met with from the Pdinburgh Review. The critics 
soon found that they had bearded a young lion : in his rage, 
he sprang out upon the whole literary craft in a satire, imi- 
tated from Juvenal, called The English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers, in v%'hich he ridicules and denounces the very best 
poets of the day furiously but most uncritically. That his 



386 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

conduct was absurd and unjust, he himself allowed afterwards; 
and he attempted to call in and destroy all the copies of this 
work. 



Childe Harold and Eastern Tales. — In March, 1809, 
he took his seat in the House of Lords, where he did not ac- 
complish much. He took up his residence at Newstead Ab- 
bey, his ancestral seat, most of which was in a ruinous condi- 
tion ; and after a somewhat disorderly life there, he set out on 
his continental tour, spending some time at Lisbon, Cadiz, 
Gibraltar, Malta, and in Greece. On his return, after two 
years' absence, he brought a summary of his travels in poet- 
ical form, — the first part of Childe Harold ; and also a more 
elaborated poem .entitled Hints from Horace. Upon the 
former he set little value ; but he thought the latter a noble 
work. The world at once reversed his decision. The satire 
in the Latin vein is scarcely read ; while to the first cantos 
of Childe Harold it was due that, in his own words, 'Mie 
woke up one morning and found himself famous." As fruits 
of the eastern portion of his travels, we have the romantic 
tale. The Giaour, published in 181 1, and The Bride of A by - 
dos, which appeared in 181 3. The popularity of these ori- 
ental stories was mainly due to their having been conceived 
on the spots they describe. In 1814 he issued The Corsair, 
perhaps the best of these sensational stories ; and with singu- 
lar versatility, in the same year, inspired by the beauty of the 
Jewish history, he produced The Hebrew Melodies, some of 
which are fervent, touching, and melodious. Late in the 
same year Lara was published, in the same volume with Mr. 
^ogQxs's Jacqneline, w^hich it threw completely into the shade. 
Thus closed one distinct period of his life and of his author- 
ship. A change came over the spirit of his dream. 

Unhappy Marriage. — In 181 5, urged by his friends, and 
thinking it due to his position, he married Miss Milbanke j but 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY. 38/ 

the union was without affection on either side, and both were 
unhappy. One child, a daughter, was born to them; and a 
year had hardly passed when they were separated, by mutual 
consent and for reasons never truly divulged ; and which, in 
spite of modern investigations, must remain mysterious. He 
was licentious, extravagant, of a violent temper : his wife was 
of severe mcTrals, cold, and unsympathetic. We need not 
advance farther into the horrors recently suggested to the 
world. The blame has rested on Byron; and, at the time, 
the popular feeling was so strong, that it may be said to have 
driven him from England, It awoke in him a dark misan- 
thropy which returned English scorn with an unnatural hatred. 
He sojourned at various places on the continent. At Geneva 
he wrote a third canto of Childe Harold, and the touching 
story of Bonnivard, entitled The Prisoner of Chilloti, and 
other short poems. 

In 181 7 he was at Venice, where he formed a connection 
with the Countess Guiccioli, to the disgrace of both. In 
Venice he wrote a fourth canto of Childe Harold, the story 
of Mazeppa, the first two cantos of Don Juan, and two 
dramas, Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari. 

For two years he lived at Ravenna, where he wrote some 
of his other dramas, and several cantos of Do7i Juan. In 
1 82 1 he removed to Pisa; thence, after a short stay, to 
Genoa, still writing dramas and working at Don Juan. 

Philhellenism: His Death. — The end of his misan- 
thropy and his debaucheries was near ; but his story was 
to have a ray of sunset glory — his death was to be con- 
nected, with a noble effort and an exhibition of philanthropic 
spirit which seem in some degree to palliate his faults. Un- 
like some writers who find in his conduct only a selfish whim, 
we think that it casts a beautiful radiance upon the early 
evening of a stormy life. The Greeks were struggling for 
independence from Turkish tyranny : Byron threw himself 



388 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

heart and soul into the movement, received a commission 
from the Greek government, recruited a band of Suliotes, and 
set forth gallantly to do or die in the cause of Grecian free- 
dom : he died, but not in battle. He caught a fever of a viru- 
lent type, from his exposure, and after very few days ex- 
pired, on the 19th of April, 1824, amid the mourning of the 
nation. Of this event, Macaulay — no mean or uncertain 
critic — could say, in his epigrammatical style: ''Two men 
have died within our recollection, who, at a time of life at 
which few people have completed their education, had raised 
themselves, each in his own department, to the height of glory. 
One of them died at Longwood ; the other at Missolonghi. " 

Estimate of his Poetry. — In giving a brief estimate of 
his character and of his works, we may begin by saying that 
he represents, in clear lineaments, the nobleman, the traveller, 
the poet, and the debauchee, of the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century. In 'all his works he unconsciously depicts 
himself. He is in turn Childe Harold, Lara, the Corsair, 
and Don Juan. He affected to despise the world's opinion 
so completely that he has made himself appear worse than he 
really was — more profane, more intemperate, more licen- 
tious. It is equally true that this tendency, added to the fact 
that he was a handsome peer, had much to do with the imme- 
diate popularity of his poems. There was also a paradoxical 
vanity, which does not seem easily reconcilable with his mis- 
anthropy, that thus led him to reproduce himself in a new 
dress in his dramas and tales. He paraded himself as if, 
after all, he did value the world's opinion. 

That he was one of the new romantic poets, with, however, 
a considerable tincture of the transition school, may be read- 
ily discerned in his works : his earlier poems are full of the 
conceits of the artificial age. His EiigUsh Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers reminds one of the MacFleck7ioe of Dryden and 
The Dunciad of Pope, without bemg as good as either. When 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY. $89 

he began that original and splendid portrait of himself, and 
transcript of his travels, Cliilde Harold, he imitated Spenser 
in form and in archaism. But he was possessed by the muse : 
the man wrote as the spirit within dictated, as the Pythian 
priestess is fabled to have uttered her oracles. Childe Har- 
old is a stream of intuitive, irrepressible poetry ; not art, but 
overflowing nature : the sentiments good and bad came well- 
ing forth from his heart. His descriptive powers are great 
but peculiar. Travellers find in Childe Harold lightning 
glimpses of European scenery, art, and nature, needing no 
illustrations, almost defying them. National conditions, 
manners, customs, and costumes, are ph(^tographed in his 
verses: — the rapid rush to Waterloo; a bull-fight m Spain; 
the women of Cadiz or Saragossa ; the Lion of St. Mark; 
the eloquent statue of the Dying Gladiator; "Fair Greece, 
sad relic of departed worth ; ' ' the address to the ocean ; 
touches of love and hate ; pictures of sorrow, of torture, of 
death. Everywhere thought and glance are powerfully con- 
centrated, and we find the poem to be journal, history, epic, 
and autobiography. His felicity of expression is so great, 
that, as we come upon the happy conceptions exquisitely ren- 
dered, we are inclined to say of each, as he has said of the 
Egeria of JNIuna : 

. . . whatsoe'er thy birth, 
Thou wert a beautiful thought and softly bodied forth. 

Of his dramas which are founded upon history, we cannot 
say so much ; they are dramatic only in form : some of them 
are spectacular, like Sardaiiapalits, which is still presented 
upon the stage on account of its scenic effects. In Manfred 
we have a rare insight into his nature, and Cain is the vehicle 
for his peculiar, dark sentiments on the subject of religion. 

Don Jua?i is illustrative not only of the poet, but of the 
age ; there was a generation of such men and women. But 
quite- apart from its moral, or rather immoral, character, the 



390 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

poem is one of the finest in our literature : it is full of won- 
derful descriptions, and exhibits a splendid mastery of lan- 
guage, rhythm, and rhyme : a glorious epic with an inglorious 
hero, and that hero Byron himself. 

As a man he was an enigma to the world, and doubtless to 
himself: he was bad, but he was bold. If he was vindictive, 
he was generous ; if he was misanthropic and sceptical, it 
was partly because he despised shams : in all his actions, we see 
that implicit working out of his own nature, which not only 
conceals nothing, but even exaggerates his own faults. His 
antecedents were bad ; — his father was a villain ; his grand-un- 
cle a murderer; his mother a woman of violent temper; and 
himself, with all this legacy, a man of powerful passions. 
If evil is in any degree to be palliated because it is heredi- 
tary, those who most condemn it in the abstract, may still 
look with compassionate leniency upon the career of Lord 
Byron. 

Thomas Moore. — Emphatically the creature of his age, 
Moore wrote sentimental songs in melodious language to the 
old airs of Ireland, and used them as an instrument to excite 
the Irish people in the struggle they were engaged in against 
English misgovernment. But his songs were true neither to 
tradition nor to nature ; they placed before the ardent Celtic 
fancy an Irish glory and grandeur entirely different from the 
reality. Nor had he in any degree caught the bardic spirit. 
His lyre was attuned to reach the ear rather than the heart; 
his scenes are in enchanted lands; \\\% drajiiatis pei'sonce tread 
theatrical boards ; his thunder is a melo-dramatic roll ; his 
lightning is pyrotechny ; his tears are either hypocritical or 
maudlin; and his laughter is the perfection of genteel comedy. 

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin, on the 28th of May, 
1779: he was a diminutive but precocious child, and was 
paraded by his father and mother, who were people in hum- 
ble life, as a reciter of verse, and as an early rhymer also. 



THE NEW -ROMANTIC POETRY. 39I 

His first poem was printed in a Dublin magazine, when he 
was fourteen years old. In 1794 he entered Trinity College, 
Dublin ; and, although never considered a good scholar, he 
was graduated in 1798, when he was nineteen years old. 

Anacreon. — The first work which brought him into no- 
tice, and which manifests at once the precocity of his powers 
and the peculiarity of his taste, w^as his translation of the 
Odes of Anacreon. He had begun this work while at college, 
but it was finished and published in London, whither he had 
gone after leaving college, to enter the Middle Temple, in 
order to study law. With equal acuteness and adaptation to 
character, he dedicated the poems to the Prince of Wales, an 
anacreontic hero. As might be expected, with such a patron, 
the volume was a success. In 1801 he published another 
series of erotic poems, under the title The Poetical Works of 
the late Thomas Little. This gained for him, in Byron's 
line, the name of "the young Catullus of his day; " and, at 
the instance of Lord Moira, he was appointed poet-laureate, 
a post he filled only long enough to write one birthday ode. 
What seemed a better fortune came in the shape of an ap- 
pointment as Registrar of the Admiralty Court of Bermuda. 
He went to the island; remained but a short time; and turned 
over the uncongenial duties of the post to a deputy, who sub- 
sequently became a defaulter, and involved Moore to a large 
amount. Returning from Bermuda, he travelled in the United 
States and Canada; not without some poetical record of his 
movements. In 1806 he published his Epistles, Odes, and 
Other Poems, which called down the righteous wrath of the 
Edinburgh Review : Jeffrey denounced the book as " a public 
nuisance," and " a corrupter of public morals." For this 
harsh judgment, Moore challenged him ; but the duel was 
stopped by the police. This hostile meeting was turned to 
ridicule by Byron in the lines : 

When Little's leadless pistols met his eye, 
And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by. 



392 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Later Fortunes. — Moore was now the favorite — the 
poet and the dependent of the nobility; and his versatile pen 
was principally employed to amuse and to please. He soon 
began that series of Irish Melodies which he continued to 
augment with new pieces for nearly thirty years. 

Always of a theatrical turn, he acted well in private drama, 
in which the gentlemen were amateurs, and the female parts 
were personated by professional actresses. Thus playing in a 
cast with Miss Dyke, the daughter of an Irish actor, Moore 
fell in love with her, and married her on the 25th of March, 
1811. 

With a foolish lack of judgment, he lost his hopes of pre- 
ferment, by writing satires against the regent ; but as a means 
of livelihood, he engaged to write songs for Powers, at a 
salary of ^500 per annum, for seven years. 

Lalla Rookh. — The most acceptable offering to fame, 
and the most successful pecuniary venture, was his Lalla 
Rookh. The East was becoming known to the English ; and 
the fancy of the poet could convert the glimpses of oriental 
things into charming pictures. Long possessed with the pur- 
pose to write an Eastern story in verse, Moore set to work 
with laudable industry to read books of travels and history, in 
order to form a strong and sensible basis for his poetical su- 
perstructure. The work is a collection of beautiful poems, 
in a delicate setting of beautiful prose. The princess Lalla 
Rookh journeys, with great pomp, to become the bride of the 
youthful king of Bokkara, and finds among her attendants a 
handsome young poet, who beguiles the journey by singing to 
her these tales in verse. The dangers of the process became 
manifest — the king of Bokkara is forgotten, and the heart of 
the unfortunate princess is won by the beauty and the min- 
strelsy of the youthful poet. What is her relief and her joy 
to find on her arrival the unknown poet seated upon the throne 
as the king, who had won her heart as an humble bard ! 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY. 393 

This beautiful and popular work was published in 1817; 
and for it Moore received from his publishers, the Longmans, 

;£3ooo- 

In the same year Moore took a small cottage at Sloperton, 
on the estate of the Marquis of Lansdowne, which, with some 
interruptions of travel, and a short residence in Paris, con- 
tinued to be his residence during his life. Improvident in 
money matters, he was greatly troubled by his affairs in Ber- 
muda ; — the amount for which he became responsible by the 
defalcation of his deputy was ^6000 ; which, however, by 
legal cleverness, was compromised for a thousand guineas. 

His Diary. — It is very fortunate, for a proper understand- 
ing of Moore's life, that we have from this time a diary which 
is invaluable to the biographer. In 1820 he went to Paris, 
where he wasted his time and money in fashionable dissipa- 
tion, and produced nothing of enduring value. Here he 
sketched an Egyptian story, versified in Alciphron, but en- 
larged in the prose romance called The Epicurean. 

On a short tour he visited Venice, where he received, as a 
gift from Lord Byron, his autobiographical memoirs, which 
contained so much that was compromising to others, that 
they were never published — at least in that form. They 
were withdrawn from the Murrays, in whose hands he had 
placed them, upon the death of Byron in 1824, and 
destroyed. A short visit to Ireland led to his writing the 
Memoirs of Captain Rock, a work which attained an unpre- 
cedented popularity in Ireland. 

In 1825 he published his Life of Sheridan, which is rather 
a friendly panegyric than a truthful biography. 

During three years — from 1827 to 1830 — he Was engaged 
upon the Life of Byron, which concealed more truth than it 
divulged. But in all these years, his chief dependence for 
daily bread was upon his songs and glees, squibs for news- 
papers and magazines, and review articles. 



394 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

In 1 83 1 he made another successful hit in his Life of Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald, a rebel of '98, which was followed in 
1833 t)y The Travels of a?i Irish Geiitlema?i i7i Search of a 
Religion. 

In 1835, through the agency of Lord John Russel, the im- 
provident poet received a pension of £,z^o. It came in a 
time of need ; for he was getting old, and his mind moved 
more sluggishly. His infirmities made him more domestic ; 
but his greater trials were still before him. His sons were 
frivolous spendthrifts; one for whom he had secured a com- 
mission in the army behaved ill, and drew upon his impover- 
ished father again and again for money : both died young. 
This cumulation of troubles broke him down ; he had a cere- 
bral attack in Dec.ember, 1849, ^^"^ lived helpless and 
broken until the 26th of February, 1852, when he expired 
without suffering. 

His Poetry. — In most cases, the concurrence of what an 
author has written will present to us the mental and moral 
features of the man. It is particularly true in the case of 
Moore. He appears to us in Protean shapes, indeed, but not 
wiihout an affinity between them. Small in stature, of jovial 
appearance ; devoted to the gayest society ; not very earnest 
in politics \ a Roman Catholic in name, with but little prac- 
tical religion, he pandered at first to a frivolous public taste, 
and was even more corrupt than the public morals. 

Not so apparently as Pope an artificial poet, he had few 
touches of nature. Of lyric sentiment he has but little; but 
we must differ from those who deny to him rare lyrical ex- 
pression, and happy musical adaptations. His songs one can 
hardly read ; we feel that they must be sung. He has been 
accused, too violently, by Maginn of plagiarism : this, of 
course, means of phrases and ideas. In our estimate of Moore, 
it counts but little ; his rare rhythm and exquisite cadences are 
not plagiarized ; they are his own, and his chief merit. 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY. 395 

He abounds in imagery of oriental gorgeousness ; and if, 
in personality, he may be compared to his own Peri, or one 
of *'the beautiful blue damsel flies" of that poem, he has 
given to his unfriendly critics a judgment of his own style, in 
a criticism made by Fadladeen of the young poet's story to 
Lalla Rookh; — "it resembles one of those Maldivian boats — 
a slight, gilded thing, sent adrift without .rudder or ballast, 
and with nothing but vapid sweets and faded flowers on 
board." ''The effect of the whole," says one of his biog- 
raphers, speaking of Lalla Rookh, ''is much the same as 
that of a magnificent ballet, on which all the resources of the 
theatre have been lavished, and no expense spared in golden 
clouds, ethereal light, gauze-clad sylphs, and splendid tab- 
leaux." 

Moore has been felicitously called "the poet of all circles," 
a phrase which shows that he reflected the general features of 
his age. At no time could the license of Anacreon^ or the 
poems of Little, have been so well received as when "the 
first gentleman in Europe " set the example of systematic im- 
purity. At no time could Irish Melodies have had such a 
furore of adoption and applause, as when Repeal was the cry, 
and the Irish were firing their minds by remembering "the 
glories of Brian the Brave; " that Brian Boroimhe who died 
in the eleventh century, after defeating the Danes in twenty- 
five battles. 

Moore's Biographies^ with all their faults, are important 
social histories. Lalla Rookh has a double historical signifi- 
cance: it is a reflection — X-^k.^ Anastasius and Vathek, like 
Thalaba and The Curse of Kehama, like The Giaour and 
Tiie Bride of Abydos — of English conquest, travel, and ad- 
venture in the East. It is so true to nature in oriental de- 
scriptions and allusions, that one traveller declared that to 
read it was like riding on a camel ; but it is far more im- 
portant to observe that the relative conditions of England 
and the Irish Roman Catholics are symbolized in the Moslem 



39^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

rule over the Ghebers, as delineated in The Fire Worshippers, 
In his preface to that poem, Moore himself says : '' The cause 
of tolerance was again my inspiring theme; and the spirit 
that had spoken in the melodies of Ireland soon found itself 
at home in the East." 

In an historic view of English Literature, the works of 
Moore, touching almost every subject, must always be of 
great value to the student of his period : there he will always 
have his prominent place. But he is already losing his niche 
in public favor as a poet proper ; better taste, purer morals, 
truer heart-songs, and more practical views will steadily sup- 
plant him, until, with no power to influence the present, he 
shall stand only as a charming relic of the past. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (cONTINUEd). 



Robert Burns. I George Crabbe. 

His Poems. Thomas Campbell. 

His Career. | Samuel Rogers. 

Robert Burns. 



p. B. Shelley. 
John Keats. 
Other Writers. 



IF Moore was, in the opinion of his age, an Irish prodigy, 
Burns is, for all time, a Scottish marvel. The one was 
polished and musical, but artificial and insidiously immoral ; 
the other homely and simple, but powerful and effective to 
men of all classes in society. The one was the poet of the 
aristocracy ; the other the genius whose sympathies were with 
the poor. One was most at home in the palaces of the great; 
and the other, in the rude Ayrshire cottage, or in the little 
sitting-room of the landlord in company v/ith Souter John 
and Tam O'Shanter. As to most of his poems, Burns was 
really of no distinct school, but seems to stand alone, — the 
creature of circumstance rather than of the age, in an unnat- 
ural and false position, compared by himself to the daisy he 
uprooted with his ploughshare : 

Even thou who r/xourn'st the daisy's fate, 
That fate is thine — no distant date ; 
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate, 

Full on thy bloom, 
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight 

Shall be thy doom ! 

His life was uneventful. He was the son of a very poor 
34 397 



39^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

man who was gardener to a gentleman at Ayr.- He was born 
in Alloway on the 25th of January, 1759. His early educa- 
tion was scanty ; but he read with avidity the few books on 
which he could lay his hands, among which he particularly 
mentions, in his short autobiography, The Spectator, the 
poems of Pope, and the writings of Sterne and Thomson. 
But the work which he was to do needed not even that train- 
ing : he drew his simple subjects from surrounding nature, 
and his ideas came from his heart rather than his head. Like 
Moore, he found the old tunes or airs of the country, and set 
them to new words — words full of sentiment and sense. 

His Poems. — .Most of his poems are quite short, and of the 
kind called fugitive, except that they will not fly away. The 
Cotter' s Saturday Night is for men of all creeds, a pastoral 
full of divine philosophy. His Address to the Dcil is a ten- 
der thought even for the Prince of Darkness, whom, says 
Carlyle, his kind nature could not hate with right orthodoxy. 
His poems on The Louse, The Field-Mouse' s Nest, and The 
Mountain Daisy, are homely meditations and moral lessons, 
and contain counsels for all hearts. In The Twa Dogs he 
contrasts, in fable, the relative happiness of rich and poor. 
In the beautiful song 

Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doun, 

he expresses that hearty sympathy with nature which is one 
of the most attractive features of his character. His Bruce' s 
Address stirs the blood, and makes one start up into an atti- 
tude of martial advance. But his most famous poem — 
drama, comedy, epic, and pastoral — is Tarn o' Shanter : it 
is a universal favorite ; and few travellers leave Scotland with- 
out standing at the window of "Alloway's auld haunted 
kirk," walking over the road upon which Meg galloped, 
pausing over "the keystane of the brigg " where she lost her 
tail; and then returning, full of the spirit of the poem, to sit 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (CONTINUED). 399 

in Tarn's chair, and drink ale out of the same silver-bound 
wooden bicker, in the very room of the inn where Tarn and 
the poet used to get ''unco fou," while praising " inspiring 
bold John Barley-corn." Indeed, in the words of the poor 
Scotch carpenter, met by Washington Irving at Kirk Alloway, 
''it seems as if the country had grown more beautiful since 
Burns had written his bonnie little songs about it." 

His Career. — The poet's career was sad. Gifted but 
poor, and doomed to hard work, he was given a place in the 
excise. He went to Edinburgh, and for a while was a great 
social lion ; but he acquired a horrid thirst for drink, which 
shortened his life. He died in Dumfries, at the early age of 
thirty-seven. His allusions to his excesses are frequent, and 
many of them touching. In his praise of Scotch Dri7ik he 
sings con amore. In a letter to Mr. Ainslie, he epitomizes his 
failing: "Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, 
headache, nausea, and all the rest of the hounds of hell that 
beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunk- 
enness, — can you speak peace to a troubled soul." 

Burns was a great letter-writer, and thought he excelled in 
that art ; but, valuable as his letters are, in presenting certain 
phases of his literary and personal character, they display 
none of the power of his poetry, and would not alone have 
raised him to eminence. They are in vigorous and some- 
what pedantic English ; while most of his poems are in that 
Lowland Scottish language or dialect which attracts by its 
homeliness and pleases by its couleur locale. It should be 
stated, in conclusion, that Burns is original in thought and 
presentation ; and to this gift must be added a large share of 
humor, and an intense patriotism. Poverty was his grim 
horror. He declared that it killed his father, and was pur- 
suing him to the grave. He rose above the drudgery of a 
farmer's, toil, and he found no other work which would sus- 
tain himj and yet this needy poet stands to-day among the 



400 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

most distinguished Scotchmen who have contributed to Eng- 
lish Literature. 

George Crabbe. — Also of the transition school ; in form 
and diction adhering to the classicism of Pope, but, with 
Thomson, restoring the pastoral to nature, the poet of the 
humble poor; — in the words of Byron, "Pope in worsted 
stockings," Crabbe was the delight of his time ; and Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, returning to die at Abbotsford, paid him the fol- 
lowing tribute : he asked that they would read him something 
amusing, "Read me a bit of Crabbe." As it was read, he 
exclaimed, "Capital — excellent — very good; Crabbe has 
lost nothing." 

George Crabbe was born on December 24th, 1754, at Aid- 
borough, Suffolk. His father was a poor man ; and Crabbe, 
with little early education, was apprenticed to a surgeon, and 
afterwards practised ; but his aspirations were such that he 
went to London, with three pounds in his pocket, for a lit- 
erary venture. He would have been in great straits, had it 
not been for the disinterested generosity of Burke, to whom, 
although an utter stranger, he applied for assistance. Burke 
aided him by introducing him to distinguished literary men; 
and his fortune was made. In 1781 he published The Li- 
brary, which was well received. Crabbe then took orders, 
and was for a little time curate at Aldborough, his native place, 
while other preferment awaited him. In 1783 he appeared 
under still more favorable auspices, by publishing The Village, 
which had a decided success. Two livings were then given 
him ; and he, much to his credit, married his early love, a 
young girl of Suffolk. In The Village he describes homely 
scenes with great power, in pentameter verse. The poor are 
the heroes of his humble epic ; and he knew them well, as 
having been of them. In 1807 appeared llie Parish Regis- 
ter, in 18 10 Tlie Borough, and in 1812 his Tales in Verse, — 
the precursor, in the former style, however, of Words- 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (cONTINUEd). 4OI 

worth's lyrical stories. All these were excellent and very 
popular, because they were real, and from his own experience. 
The Tales of the Hall, referring chiefly to the higher classes 
of society, are more artificial, and not so good. His pen was 
moit at home in describing smugglers, gipsies, and hjLimble 
villagers, and in delineating poverty and wretchedness ; and 
thus opening to the rich and titled, doors through which they 
might exercise their philanthropy and munificence. In this 
way Crabbe was a reformer, and did great good ; although 
his scenes are sometimes revolting, and his pathos too exact- 
ing. As a painter of nature, he is true and felicitous ; espe- 
cially in marine and coast views, where he is a pre-Raphaelite 
in his minuteness. Byron called him "Nature's sternest 
painter, but the best." He does not seem to write for effect, 
and he is without pretension ; so that the critics were quite at 
fault; for what they mainly attack is not the poet's work so 
much as the consideration whether his works come up to his 
manifesto. Crabbe died in 1832, on the 3d of February, 
being one of the famous dead of that fatal year. 

Crabbe's poems mark his age. At an earlier time, when 
literature was for the fashionable few, his subjects would have 
been beneath interest ; but the times had changed ; education 
had been more diffused, and readers were multiplied. Gold- 
smith's Deserted Village had struck a new chord, upon which 
Crabbe continued to play. Of his treatment of these sub- 
jects it must be said, that while he holds a powerful pen, and 
portrays truth vividly, he had an eye only for the sadder con- 
ditions of life, and gives pain rather than excites sympathy 
in the reader. Our meaning will be best illustrated by a 
comparison of The Village of Crabbe with The Deserted Vil- 
lage of Goldsmith, and the pleasure v^■ith which we pass from 
the squalid scenes of the former to the gentler sorrovrs and 
sympathies of the latter. 

Thomas Campbell. — More identified v.dth his age thjin 
34* * 2 A 



402 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

any other poet, and yet forming a link between the old and 
the new, was Campbell. Classical and correct in versifica- 
tion, and smothering nature with sonorous prosody, he still 
had the poetic fire, and an excellent power of poetic criti- 
cism. He was the son of a merchant, and was born at Glas- 
gow on the 27th of July, 1777. He thus grew up with the 
French revolution, and with the great progress of the Eng- 
lish nation in the wars incident to it. He was carefully edu- 
cated, and was six years at the University of Glasgow, where 
he received prizes for composition. He went later to Ger- 
many, after being graduated, to study Greek literature with 
Heyne. After some preliminary essays in verse, he published 
the PleasiLres of Hope in 1799, before he was twenty-two 
years old. It was one of the greatest successes of the age, 
and has always since been popular. His subject was one 
of universal interest; his verse was high-sounding; and his 
illustrations modern — such as the fall of Poland — Finis 
PolonicR ; and although there is some turgidity, and some 
want of unity, making the work a series of poems rather than 
a connected one, it was most remarkable for a youth of his 
age. It was perhaps unfortunate for his future fame ; for it 
led the world to expect other and better things, which were 
not forthcoming. Travelling on the continent in the next 
year, 1800, he witnessed the battle of Hohenlinden from the 
monastery of St. Jacob, and wrote that splendid, ringing 
battle-piece, which has been so often recited and parodied. 
From that time he wrote nothing in poetry worthy of note, 
except songs and battle odes, with one exception. Among 
his battle - pieces which have never been equalled are Ye 
Ma7-iners of England, The Battle of the Baltic, and LochieV s 
Warning. His Exile of Erin\i2js> been greatly admired, and 
was suspected at the time of being treasonable ; the author, 
however, being entirely innocent of such an intention, as he 
clearly showed. 

Besides reviews and other miscellanies, Campbell wrote 



THE NEW ROMANTIC' POETRY (CONTINUED). 4O3 

The A finals of Great Britai7i, from the Accession of George 
III. to the Peace of Amie7is, which is a graceful but not val- 
uable work. In 1805 he received a pension of ^200 per 
annum. 

In 1809 he published his Gertrude of Wyoniing — the ex- 
ception referred to — a' touching story, written with exquisite 
grace, but not true to the nature of the country or the Indian 
character. Like Passe las, it is a conventional English tale 
with foreign names and localities ; but as an English poem it 
has great merit ; and it turned public attention to the beau- 
tiful Valley of Wyoming, and the noble river which flows 
through it. 

As a critic, Campbell had great acquirements and gifts. 
These were displayed in his elaborate Specimens of the British 
/^^<f/j-, published in 181 9, and in Mi'i, Lectures on Poetry be- 
fore the Surrey Institution in 1S20. In 1827 he was elected 
Lord Rector of the L'niversity of Glasgow ; but afterwards 
his literary efforts were by no means worthy of his reputation. 
Few have read his Pilgri?n of Glencoe ; and all who have, are 
pained by its manifestation of his failing powers. In fact, his 
was an unfinished fame — a brilliant beginning, but no con- 
tinuance. Sir Walter Scott has touched it with a needle, 
when he says, " Campbell is in a manner a bugbear to him- 
self; the brightness of his early success is a detriment to all 
his after efforts. He is afraid of the shadow which his own 
fame casts before him." Byron placed him in the second 
category of the greatest living English poets ; but Byron was 
no critic. 

He also published a Life of Petrarch, and a Life of Pre d- 
erick the Great ; and, in 1830, he edited the New Monthly 
Magazi?ie. He died at Boulogne, June 15th, 1844, after a 
long period of decay in mental power. 

Samuel Rogers. — Rogers was a companion or consort to 
Campbell, although the two men were very different person- 



I 



404 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

ally. As Campbell had borrowed from Akenside and written 
The Pleasures of Hope, Rogers enriched cur literature with 
The Pleasures of Memory, a poem of exquisite versification, 
more finished and unified than its pendent picture ; contain- 
ing neither passion nor declamation, but polish, taste, and 
tenderness. 

Rogers v/as-born in a suburb of London, in 1762. His 
father was a banker ; and, although well educated, the poet 
was designed to succeed him, as he did, being until his death 
a partner in the same banking-house. Early enamored of 
poetry by reading Beattie's Minstrel, Rogers devoted all his 
spare time to its cultivation, and with great and merited 
success. 

In 1786 he produced his Ode to Supe7'stition, after the man- 
ner of Gray, and in 1792 h.\s Pleasures of Memory, which was 
enthusiastically received, and which is polished to the ex- 
treme. In t8i2 appeared a fragment. The Voyage of Colum- 
bus, and in \%\Af Jacqueline, in the same volume with Byron's 
Lara. Human Life was published in 1819. It is a poem in 
the old style, (most of his poems are in the rhymed pen- 
tameter couplet;) but in 1822 appeared his poem of Ltaly, in 
blank verse, which has the charm of originality in presenta- 
tion, freshness of personal experience, picturesqueness in de- 
scription, novelty in incident and story, scholarship, and taste 
in art criticism. In short, it is not only the best of his 
poems, but it has great merit besides that o'f the poetry. The 
story of Ginevra is a masterpiece of cabinet art, and is uni- 
versally appreciated. With these works Rogers contented 
himself. Rich and distinguished, his house became a place 
of resort to men of distinction and taste in art : it was 
filled with articles of vei'tu ; and Rogers the poej: lived long 
as Rogers the virtuoso. His breakfast parties were particu- 
larly noted. His long, prosperous, and happy life was ended 
on the 1 8th December, 1855, ^^ ^^^ ^S^ ^^ ninety-two. 

The position of Rogers may be best illustrated in the words 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (cONTINUEd). 405 

of Sir J. Mackintosh, in which he says: ''He appeared at 
the commencement of this literary revolution, without paying 
court to the revolutionary tastes, or seeking distinction by 
resistance to them." His works are not destined to live 
freshly in the course of literature, but to the historical student 
they mark in a very pleasing manner the characteristics of his 



Percy B. Shelley. — Revolutions never go backward; 
and one of the greatest characters in this forward movement 
was a gifted, irregular, splendid, unbalanced mind, who, 
while taking part in it, unconsciously, as one of many, stands 
out also in a very singular individuality. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on the 4th of August, 1792, 
at Fieldplace, in Sussex, England. He was the eldest son of 
Sir Timothy Shelley, and of an ancient family, traced back, 
it is said, to Sir Philip Sidney. When thirteen years old he 
was sent to Eton, where he began to display his revolutionary 
tendencies by his resistance to the fagging system ; and where 
he also gave some earnest in writing of his future powers. 
At the age of sixteen he entered University College, Oxford, 
and appeared as a radical in most social, political, and reli- 
gious questions. On account of a paper entitled The Neces- 
sity of Atheism, he was expelled from the university and went 
to London. In 181 1 he made a runaway match with Miss 
Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of the keeper of a coffee- 
house, which brought down on him the wrath of his father. 
After the birth of two children, a separation followed ; and he 
eloped with Miss Godwin in 181 4. His wife committed sui- 
cide in 181 6 ; and then the law took away from him the con- 
trol of his children, on the ground that he was an atheist. 

After some time of residence in England, he returned to 
Italy, where soon after he met with a tragical end. Going in 
an open boat from Leghorn to Spezzia, he was lost in a storm 
on the Mediterranean : his body was washed on shore near 



406 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the town of Via Reggio, where his remains were burned In 
the presence of Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and others. The 
ashes were afterwards buried in the Protestant cemetery at 
Rome in July, 1822. 

Shelley's principles were irrational and dangerous. He 
was a transcendentalist of the extreme order, and a believer 
in the perfectability of human nature. His works are full of 
his principles. The earliest was Queen Mab, in which his 
profanity and atheism are clearly set forth. It was first, pri- 
vately printed, and afterwards published in 1821. This was 
followed hy Aiastor, or /he Spirit of Solitude, in 181 6. Li this 
he gives his own experience in the tragical career of the hero. 
His longest and most pretentious poem was The Revolt of 
Isla77i, published in 18 19. It is in the Spenserian stanza. 
Also, in the same year, he published The Cenci, a tragedy, 
a dark and gloomy story on what should be a forbidden 
subject, but very powerfully written. In 1820 he also pub- 
lished The Pro7netheus Utiboimd, which is full of his irreli- 
gious views. His remaining works were smaller poems, 
among which may be noted Adonais, and the odes To the 
Skylark and The Cloud. 

In considering his character, we must first observe the 
■ power of his imagination; it was so strong and all-absorbing, 
that it shut out the real and the true. He was a man of ex- 
treme sensibility ; and that sensibility, hurt by common con- 
tact with things and persons around him, made him mor- 
bid in morality and metaphysics. He was a polemic of the 
fiercest type ; and while he had an honest desire for reform 
of the evils that he saw about him, it is manifest that he at- 
tacked existing institutions for the very love of controversy. 
Bold, retired, and proud, without a spice of vanity, if he has 
received harsh judgment from one half the critical world, 
who had at least the claim that they were supporting pure 
morals and true religion, his character has been unduly ex- 
alted by the other half, who have mistaken reckless dogma- 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (CONTINUED). 407 

tism for true nobility of soul. The most charitable judg- 
ment is that of Moir, who says: "It is needless to disguise 
the fact — and it accounts for all — his mind was diseased; 
he never knew, even from boyhood, what it was to breathe the 
atmosphere of healthy life — to have the jnens sana in corpora 
saiio. ' ' 

But of his poetical powers we must speak in a different 
manner. What he has left, gives token that, had he lived, he 
would have been one of the greatest modern poets. Thor- 
oughly imbued with the Greek poetry, his verse-power was 
wonderful, his language stately and learned without pedantry, 
his inspiration was that of nature in her grandest moods, his 
fancy always exalted ; and he presents the air of one who pro- 
duces what is within him from an intense love of his art, 
without regard to the opinion of the world around him, — 
which, indeed, he seems to have despised more thoroughly 
than any other poet has ever done. Byron affected to de- 
spise it ; Shelley really did. 

We cannot help thinking that, had he lived after passing 
through the fiery trial of youthful passions and disordered 
imagination, he might have astonished the world with the 
grand spectacle of a convert to the good and true, and an 
apostle in the cause of both. Of him an honest thinker has 
said, — and there is much truth in the apparent paradox, — 
*'No man who was not a fanatic, had ever more natural piety 
than he ; and his supposed atheism is a mere metaphysical 
crotchet in which he was kept by the affected scorn and ma- 
lignity of dunces." ^ 

John Keats. — Another singular illustration of eccentric- 
ity and abnormal power in verse is found in the brief career 
of John Keats, the son of the keeper of a livery-stable in 
London, who was born on the 29th October, 1795. 

Keats was a sensitive and pugnacious youth; and in 1810, 

1 H. C. Robinson, Diary II., 79. 



408 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

after a very moderate education, he was apprenticed to a sur- 
geon ; but the love of poetry soon interfered with the surgery, 
and he began to read, not without the spirit of emulation, 
the works of the great poets — Chaucer,. Spenser, Shakspeare, 
and Milton. After the issue of a small volume which attracted 
little or no attention, he published his Endymion in 1818, 
which, with some similarity in temperament, he inscribed to 
the memory of Thomas Chatterton. It is founded upon the 
Greek mythology, and is written in a varied measure. Its 
opening line has been a familiar quotation since : 

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. 

It was assailed by all the critics ; but particularly, although 
not unfairly, by Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review. An arti- 
cle in Blackwoody breathing the spirit of British caste, had 
the bad taste to tell the young apothecary to go back to his 
galley-pots. The excessive sensibility of Keats received a 
great shock from this treatment ; but we cannot help thinking 
that too much stress has been laid upon this in saying that he 
was killed by ,it. This was more romantic than true. He 
was by inheritance consumptive, and had lost a brother by 
that disease. Add to this that his peculiar passions and long- 
ings took the form of fierce hypochondria. 

With a decided originality, he was so impressible that there 
are in his writings traces of the authors whom he was reading, 
if he did not mean to make them models of style. 

In 1820 he published a volume containing Lamia, Isabella^ 
and The Eve of St. Agnes, and Hyperion, a fragment, which 
was received with far greater favor by the reviewers. Keats 
was self-reliant, and seems to have had something of that mag- 
nificent egotism which is not infrequently displayed by great 
minds. 

The judicious verdict at last pronounced upon him may be 
thus epitomized : he was a poet with fine fancy, original 
ideas, felicity of expression, but full of faults due to his indi- 






THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (CONTINUED). 4O9 

viduality and his youth ; and his life was not spared to cor- 
rect these. In 1820 a hemorrhage of brilliant arterial blood 
heralded the end. He himself said, '' Bring me a candle ; 
let me see this blood ; " and when it was brought, added, ''I 
cannot be deceived in that color ; that drop is my death- 
warrant : I must die." By advice he went to Italy, vv^here 
he grew rapidly worse, and died on the 23d of February, 
1821, having left this for his epita[)h : *^ Here lies one whose 
name was writ in water." Thus dying at the age of twenty- 
four, he must be judged less for what he was, than as an 
earnest of what he would have been. The Eve of St. 
Agnes is one of the most exquisite poems in any language, 
and is as essentially allied to the sniipiicity and nature of the 
modern school of poetry as his Endymion is to the older 
school. Keats took part in what a certain writer has called 
"the reaction against the barrel-organ style, which had been 
reigning by a kind of sleepy, divme right for half a century." 

Other Writers of the Period. 

In consonance with the Romantic school of Poetry, and as contributors to 
the prose fiction of the period of Scoit, Byron, and Moore, a number of 
gifted women have made good their claim to the favor of the reading 
world, and have left to us productions of no mean value. First 
among these we mention Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794- 
1835 : early married to Captain Hemans, of the army, she was not 
happy in the conjugal state, and lived most of her a,fter-life in retire- 
ment, separated from her husband. Her style is harmonious, and her 
lyrical power excellent; she makes melody of common-places ; and the 
low key in which her poetiy is pitched made lier a favorite with the 
multitude. There is special fervor in her religious poems. Most of 
her writings are fugitive and occasional pieces. Among the longer 
poems are The Forest Sanchiary, Dartmoor, (a lyric poem,) and The 
Restoration of the works of Art to Italy. The Siege of Valencia and The 
Vespers of Palermo are plays on historical subjects. There is a same- 
ness in her poetry v/hich tires ; but few persons can be found who do not 
• value highly such a descriptive poem as Bernardo del Carpio, conceived 
in the very spirit of the Spanish Ballads, and such a sad and tender 
morp.lizing as that found in The Hour of Death : 
35 



4IO ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Leaves have their time to fall. 

And flowers to wither, at the north-wind's breath. 

And stars to set — but all, 

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death ! 

Such poems as these will live when the greater part of*what she has 
written has been forgotten, because its ministry has been accomplished. 

Mrs. Carolme Elizabeth Norton, (bom in 1808, still living:) she is the 
daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and the grand-daughter of the famous 
R. B. Sheridan, She married the Hon. Mr. Norton, and, like Mrs. 
Hemans, was unhappy in her union. As a poet, she has masculine gifts 
combined with feminine grace and tenderness. Her principal poems 
are The Sorrows of Rosalie, The Undying One, (founded on the legend 
of The Wandering Jew,) and The Dream, Besides these her facile pen 
has produced a multitude of shorter pieces, which have been at once 
popular. Her claims to enduring fame are not great, and she must be 
content with a present popularity. 

Letitia Elizabeth Lajidon, 1802-1839: more gifted, and yet not as well 
trained as either of the preceding. Miss Landon (L. E. L.) has given 
vent to impassioned sentiment in poetiy and prose. Besides many 
smaller pieces, she wrote The Improvisatrice, The Troubadour, The 
Golden Violet, and several prose romances, among which the best are 
Romance and Reality, and Ethel Churchill. She wrote too rapidly to 
finish with elegance ; and her earlier pieces are disfigured by this want 
of finish, and by a lack of cool judgment; but her later writings are 
better matured and more correct. She married Captain Maclean, the 
governor of Cape Coast Castle, in Africa, and died there suddenly, from 
an overdose of strong medicine which she was accustomed to take for 
a nervous affection, 

Maria Edgeworth, 1767-1849: she was English born, but resided most 
of her life in Ireland. Without remarkable genius, she may be said to 
have exercised a greater influence over her period than any other woman 
who lived in it. There is an aptitude and a practical utility in her 
stories which are felt in all circles. Her works for children are de- 
lightful and foiTnative. Every one has read and i^e-read with pleasure 
the interesting and instructive stories contained in The Parents'' Assistant. 
And M'hat these are to the children, her novels are to those of larger 
growth. They are eighteen in number, and are illustrative of the so- 
ciety, fashion, and morals of the day ; and always inculcate a good 
moral. Among them we may particularize Forester, The Absentee, and 
The Modern Griselda. All critics, even those who deny her great 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (CONTINUED). 4II 

genius, agree in their estimate of the moral value of her stories, every 
one of which is at once a portraiture of her age and an instructive les- 
son to it. The feminine delicacy with which she offers counsel and ad- 
ministers reproof gives a great charm to, and will insure the permanent 
popularity of, her productions. 

Jane Austen, 1775-1817 : as a novelist she occupied a high place in her 
day, but her stories are gradually sinking into an historic repose, from 
■which the coming generations will not care to disturb them. Pride and 
Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are perhaps the best of her produc- 
tions, and are valuable as displaying the society and the nature around 
her with delicacy and tact. 

Mary Ferrier, 1782-1855 : like Miss Austen, she wrote novels of exist- 
ing society, of which The Marriage and The Inheritance are the best 
known. They were great favorites with Sir Walter Scott, who esteemed 
Miss Ferrier's genius highly : they are little read at the present time. 

Robert Follok, 1 799-1 827: a Scottish minister, who is chiefly known by 
his long poem, cast in a Miltonic mould, entitled The Course of Tiine. 
It is singularly significant of religious fervor, delicate health, youthful 
immaturity, and poetic yearnings. It abounds in startling effects, which 
please at first from their novelty, but will not bear a calm, critical 
analysis. On its first appearance, The Course of Time was immensely 
popular; but it has steadily lost favor, and its highest flights are "un- 
earthly flutterings " when compared with the powerful soarings of Mil- 
ton's imagination and the gentle harmonies of Cowper's religious muse. 
Pollok died early of consumption : his youth and his disease account 
for the faults and defects of his poem. 

Leigh Hunt, 1784-1859: a novelist, a poet, an editor, a critic, a com- 
panion of literary men, Hunt occupies a distinct position among the 
authors of his day. Wielding a sensible and graceful rather than a 
powerful pen, he has touched 'almost every subject in the range of our 
literature, and has been the champion and biographer of numerous lit- 
erary friends. He was the companion of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lamb, 
Coleridge, and many other authors. He edited at various times several 
radical papers — The Exa7niner, The Reflector, The Mdicator, and The 
Liberal : for a satire upon the regent, published in the first, he was im- 
prisoned for two years. Among his poems The Story of Rimini is the 
best. His Legend of Florence is a beautiful drama. There are few 
pieces containing so small a number of lines, and yet enshrining a full 
story, which have been as popular as his Abou Ben Adhem. Always 
cheerful, refined and delicate in style, appreciative of others, Hunt's 
place in English literature is enviable, if not very exalted; like the 



412 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

atmosphere, his writ:ings circulate healthfully and quietly around the 
efforts of greater poets than himself. 
James Hogg, 1 770-1835 : a self taught rustic, with little early schooling, 
except what the shepherd-boy could draw from nature, he wrote from 
his own head and heart without the canons and the graces of the Schools. 
With something of the homely nature of Burns, and the Scottish ro- 
mance of Walter Scott, he produced numerous poems which are 
stamped with true genius. He catered to Scottish feeling, and began 
his fame by the stirring lines beginning : 

My name is Donald McDonald, 
I live in the Highlands so grand. 

His best known poetical works are The Queen'' s Wake, containing sev- 
enteen stories in verse, of which the most striking is that of Bonny Kil- 
meny. He was always called " The Ettrick Shepherd." Wilson says 
of The Queen s Wake that " it is a garland of fresh flowers bound with 
a band of rushes from the moor; " a very fitting and just view of the 
work of one who was at once poet and rustic. 

Allan Ctinninghani^ 1785-1842: like Hogg, in that as a writer he felt 
the influence of both Burns and Scott, Cunningham was the son of a 
gardener, and a self-made man. In early life he was apprenticed to a 
mason. He wrote much fugitive poetry, among which the most popular 
pieces are, A Wet Sheet and a Floiuing Sea, Gentle Hugh Herries, and 
//'.? Ha?ne and if s Hame. Among his stories are Traditional Tales 
of the Peasantry, Lord Roldan, and The Maid of Elwar. His position 
for a time, as clerk and overseer of Chantrey's establishment, gave him 
the idea of writing The Lives of E77iinent British Painters, Sculptors, 
and Architects. He was a voluminous author; his poetry is of a high 
lyrical order, and true to nature; but his prose will not retain its place 
in public favor : it is at once diffuse and obscure. 

Thomas Hope, 1770-1831 : an Amsterdam merchant, who afterwards re- 
sided in London, and who illustrated the progress of knowledge con- 
cerning the East by his work entitled, Anastasius, or Memoirs of a 
Moder?i Greek. Published anonymously, it excited a great interest, and 
was ascribed by the public to Lord Byron. The intrigues and adven- 
tures of the hero are numerous and varied, and the book has great 
literary merit ; but it is chiefly of historical value in that it describes 
persons and scenes in Greece and Turkey, countries in which Hope 
travelled at a time when few Englishmen visited them. 

William Beckford, 1 760-1 844: he was the son of an alderman, who 



THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY! (CONTINUED). 4I3 

became Lord Mayor of London. After a careful education, he found 
himself the possessor of a colossal fortune. He travelled extensively, 
and wrote sketches of his travels. His only work of importance is that 
called Vathek, in which he describes the gifts, the career, and the fate 
of the Caliph of that name, who was the grandson of the celebrated 
Haroun al Raschid. His palaces are described in a style of Oriental 
gorgeousness ; his temptations, his lapses from virtue, his downward 
progress, , are presented with dramatic power; and there is nothing in 
our literature more horribly real and terror-striking than the Hall of 
Eblis, — that hell where every heart was "on fire, where " the Caliph Vat- 
hek, who, for the sake of empty pomp and forbidden power, had sullied 
himself with a thousand crimes, became a prey to grief without end 
and remorse without mitigation." Many of Beckford's other writings 
are blamed for their voluptuous character ; the last scene in Vathek is, 
on the other hand, a most powerful and influential sermon. Beckford 
was eccentric and unsocial : he lived for some time in Portugal, but 
returned to England, and built a luxurious palace at Bath, 
William Roscoe, 1 753-1 83 1 : a merchant and banker of Liverpool. He 
is chiefly known by his Life of Lorenzo de Medici, and The Life and 
Pontificate of Leo X., both of which contained new and valuable infor- 
mation. They are written in a pleasing style, and with a liberal and 
charitable spirit as to religious opinions. Since they appeared, history 
has developed new material and established more exacting canons, and 
the studies of later writers have already superseded these pleasing works. 
35* 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 



The New School. 
William Wordsworth. 
Poetical Canons. 
The Excursion and Sonnets. 



An Estimate. 
Robert Southey. 
His Writings. 
Historical Value. 



S. T. Coleridge. 

Early Life. 

His Helplessness. 

Hartley and H. N. Coleridge. 



The New School. 

IN the beginning of the year 1820 George III. died, after 
a very long — but in part nominal — reign of fifty-nine 
years, during a large portion of which he was the victim of in- 
sanity, while his son, afterwards George IV., administered 
the regency of the kingdom. 

George III. did little, either by example or by generosity, 
to foster literary culture : his son, while nominally encouraging 
authors, did much to injure the tone of letters in his day. 
But literature was now becoming independent and self-sus- 
taining : it needed to look no longer wistfully for a monarch's 
smile : it cared comparatively little for the court : it issued its 
periods and numbers directly to the English people: it wrote 
for them and of them; and when, in 1830, the last of the 
Georges died, after an ill-spent life, in which his personal 
pleasures had concerned him far more than the welfare of his 
people, former prescriptions and prejudices rapidly passed 
away ; and the new epoch in general improvement and literary 
culture, which had already begun its course, received a mar- 
vellous impulsion. 

The great movement, in part unconscious, from the artifi- 
cial rhetoric of the former age towards the simplicity of 

414 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 415 

nature, was now to receive its strongest propulsion : it was to 
be preached like a crusade ; to be reduced to a system, and 
set forth for the acceptance of the poetical world : it was to 
meet with criticism, and even opprobrium, because it had the 
arrogance to declare that old things had entirely passed away, 
and that all things must conform themselves to the new doc- 
trine. The high-priest of this new poetical creed was Words- 
worth : he proposed and expounded it ; he wrote according 
to its tenets ; he defended his illustrations against the critics 
by elaborate prefaces and essays. He boldly faced the clamor 
of a world in arms ; and what there was real and valuable in 
his works has survived the fierce battle, and gathered around 
him an army of proselytes, champions, and imitators. 

Wordsworth. — William Wordsworth was the son of the 
law-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale ; he was born at Cocker- 
mouth, Cumberland, in 1770. It was a gifted family. 
His brother, Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, was Master of 
Trinity College. Another, the captain of an East Indiaman, 
was lost at sea in his own ship. He had also a clever sister, 
who was the poet's friend and companion as long as she 
lived. 

Wordsworth and his companions have been called the Lake 
Poets, because they resided among the English lakes. Perhaps 
too much has been claimed for the Lake country, as giving 
inspiration to the poets who lived there : it is beautiful, but 
not so surpassingly so as to create poets as its children. The 
name is at once arbitrary and convenient. 

Wordsworth was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, 
whidh he entered in 1787 ; but whenever he could escape from 
academic restraints, he indulged his taste for pedestrian ex- 
cursions : during these his ardent mind became intimate and in- 
tensely sympathetic with nature, as may be seen in his Evening 
Walk, in the sketch of the skater, and in the large proportion 
of description in all his poems. 



4l6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

It is truer of him than perhaps of any other author, that 
the life of the man is the best history of the poet. All that 
is eventful and interesting in his life may be found translated 
in his poetry. Milton had said that the poet's life should be a 
grand poem. Wordsworth echoed the thought : 

If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, 
Then to the measure of that Heaven-born light, 
Shine, Poet ! in thy place, and be content. 

He was not distinguished at college ; the record of his days 
there may be found in The Prelude, which he calls The 
Growth of a Poef s Mind. He was graduated in 1791, with 
the degree of B. A., and went over to France, where he, 
among others, was carried away with enthusiasm for the French 
Revolution, and became a thorough Radical. That he after- 
wards changed his political views, should not be advanced in 
his disfavor ; for many ardent and virtuous minds were hoping 
to see the fulfilment of recent predictions in greater freedom 
to man. Wordsworth erred in a great company, and from 
noble sympathies. He returned to England in 1792, with his 
illusions thoro-ughly dissipated. The workings of his mind 
are presented in The Prelude. 

In the same year he published Descriptive Sketches, and 
An Evening Walk, which attracted little attention. A legacy 
of ;z{^9oo left him by his friend Calvert, in 1795, enabled the 
frugal poet to devote his life to poetry, and particularly to 
what he deemed the emancipation of poetry from the fetters 
of the mythic and from the smothering ornaments of rhet- 
oric. 

In Nov., 1797, he went to London, taking with him a play 
called The Borderers : it was rejected by the manager. In 
the autumn of 1798, he published his Lyrical Ballads, which 
contained, besides his own verses, a poem by an anonymous 
friend. The poem was The Ancient Mariner ; the friend, 
Coleridge. In the joint operation, Wordsworth took the part 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 417 

based on nature; Coleridge illustrated the supernatural. The 
Ballads were received with undisguised contempt ; nor, by 
reason of its company, did The Ancient Mariner \\2nq 2. much 
better hearing. Wordsworth preserved his equanimity, and 
an implicit faith in himself. 

After a visit to Germany, he settled in 1799 at Grasmere, 
in the Lake country, and the next year republished the Lyr- 
ical Ballads with a new volume, both of which passed to 
another edition in 1802. With this edition, Wordsworth ran 
up his revolutionary flag and nailed it to the mast. 

Poetical Canons. — It would be impossible as well as un- 
necessary to attempt an analysis of even the principal poems 
of so voluminous a writer; but it is important to state in sub- 
stance the poetical canons he laid down. They may be found 
in the prefaces to the various editions of his Ballads , and may 
be thus epitomized : 

I. He purposely chose his incidents and situations from 
common life, because in it our elementary feelings coexist in 
a state of simplicity. 

II. He adopts the language of common life, because men 
hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best 
part of- language is originally derived ; and because, being 
less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their 
feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. 

III. He asserts that the language of poetry is in no way dif- 
ferent, except in respect to metre, from that of good prose. 
Poetry can boast of no celestial zV/z^r that distinguishes her vital 
juices from those of prose : the same human blood circulates 
through the veins of them both. In works of imagination and 
sentiment, in proportion as ideas and feelings are valuable, 
whether the composition be in prose or verse, they require and 
exact one and the same language. 

Such are the principal changes proposed by Wordsworth ; 
and we find Herder, the German poet and metaphysician, 

2B 



4l8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

agreeing with him in his estimate of poetic language. Hav- 
ing thus propounded his tenets, he wrote his earher poems as 
illustrations of his views, affecting a simplicity in subject and 
diction that was sometimes simply ludicrous. It was an af- 
fected simplicity : he was simple with a purpose ; he wrote 
his poems to suit his canons, and in that way his simplicity 
became artifice. 

Jeffrey and other critics rose furiously against the poems 
which inculcated such doctrines. *' This will never do " were 
the opening words of an article in the Edinbiii'-gh Review. 
One of the Rejected Addresses, called The Baby's Debut, by 
W. W., (spoken in the character of Nancy Lake, eight years 
old, who is drawn upon the stage in a go-cart,) parodies the 
ballads thus : 

What a large floor! 'tis like a town; 
The carpet, when they lay it down, 

Won't hide it, I '11 be bound : 
And there 's a row of lamps, my eye ! 
How they do blaze : I wonder why 

They keep them on the ground ? 

And this, Jeffrey declares, is a flattering imitation of Words- 
worth's style. 

The day for depreciating Wordsworth has gone by ; but 
calmer critics must still object to his poetical views in their en- 
tireness. In binding all poetry to his dirta, he ignores that 
mythiis in every human mind, that longing after the heroic, 
which will not be satisfied with the simple and commonplace. 
One realm in which Poetry rules with an enchanted sceptre 
is the land of reverie and day-dream, — a land of fancy, in 
which genius builds for itself castles at once radiant and, for 
the time, real ; in which the beggar is a king, the poor man 
a Croesus, the timid man a hero: this is the fairy- land of the 
imagination. Among Wordsworth's poems are a number 
called Poems of the Imagination. He wrote learnedly about 
the imagination and fancy; but the truth is, that of all the 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 4I9 

great poets, —and, in spite of his faults, he is a great poet, — 
there is none so entirely devoid of imagination. What has 
been said of the heroic may be applied to wit, so important 
an element in many kinds of poetry ; he ignores it because 
he was without it totally. If only humble life and common- 
place incidents and unfigured rhetoric and bald Janguage are 
the proper materials for the poetry, what shall be said of all 
literature, ancient and modern, until Wordsworth's day? 

The Excursion and Sonnets. — With his growing fame 
and riper powers, he had deviated from his own principles, 
especially of language ; and his peaceful epic, The Excursion, 
is full of difficult theology, exalted philosophy, and glowing 
rhetoric. His only attempt to adhere, to his system presents 
the incongruity of putting these subjects into the lips of men, 
some of whom, the Scotch pedler for example, are not sup- 
posed to be equal to their discussion. In his language, too, 
he became far more polished and melodious. The young 
writer of the Lyrical Ballads would have been shocked to 
know that the more famous Wordsworth could write 



or speak of 



A golden lustre slept upon the hills: 



A pupil in the many-chambered school, 
Where superstition weaves her airy dreams. 



The Excursion, although long, is unfinished, and is only a 
portion of what was meant to be his great poem — The Re- 
cluse. It contains poetry of the highest order, apart from 
its mannerism and its improbable narrative ;. but the author 
is to all intents a different man from that of the Ballads : 
as different as the conservative Wordsworth of later years 
was from the radical youth who praised the French Rev- 
olution of 1 79 1. As a whole. The Excursion is accurate, 
philosophic, and very dull, so that few readers have the 



Hf 



420 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

patience to complete its perusal, while many enjoy its beau- 
tiful passages. 

To return to the events of his life. In 1802 he married; 
and, after several changes of residence, he finally purchased 
a place called Rydal-mount in 181 3, where he spent the 
remainder of his long, learned, and pure life. Long-stand- 
ing dues from the Earl of Lonsdale to his father were paid ; 
and he received the appointment of collector at Whitehaven 
and stamp distributor for Cumberland. Thus he had an 
ample income, which was increased in 1842 by a pension of 
^^300 per annum. In 1843 ^e was made poet - laureate. 
He died in 1850, a famous poet, his reputation being due 
much more to his ov/n clever individuality than to the poetic 
principles he asserted. 

His ecclesiastical sonnets compare favorably with any that 
have been written in English. Landor, no friend of the 
poet, says : '' Wordsworth has written more fine sonnets than 
are to be met with in the language besides. ' ' 

An Estimate. — The great am^ount of verse Wordsworth 
has written is due to his estimate of the proper uses of poetry. 
Where other men would have written letters, journals, or 
prose sketches, his ready metrical pen wrote in verse : an 
excursion to England or Scotland, Yarrow Visited and Re- 
visited, journeys in Germany and Italy, are all in verse. He 
exhibits in them all great humanity and benevolence, and is 
emphatically and without cant the poet of religion and mo- 
rality. Coleridge — a poet and an attached friend, perhaps a 
partisan — claims for him, in his Biographia Literaria, *' purity 
of language, freshness, strength, ctiriosa felicitas of diction, 
truth to nature in his imagery, imagination in the highest 
degree, but faulty fancy." We have already ventured to deny 
him the possession of imagination : the rest of his friend's 
eulogium is not undeserved. He had and has many ardent 
admirers, but none more ardent than himself. He constantly 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 42I 

praised his own verses, and declared that they would ulti- 
mately conquer all prejudices and become universally popular 
— an opinion that the literary world does not seem disposed 
to adopt. 

Robert Southey. -— Next to Wordsworth, and, with cer- 
tain characteristic differences, of the same school, but far 
beneath him in poetical power, is Robert Southey, who was 
born at Bristol, August 12, 1774. He was the son of a 
linen-draper in that town. He entered Balliol College, 
Oxford, in 1792, but left without taking his degree. In 1794 
he published a radical poem on the subject of Wat Tyler, 
the sentiments of which he was afterwards very willing to re- 
pudiate. With the enthusiastic instinct of a poet, he joined 
with Wordsworth and Coleridge in a scheme called Fanti- 
socrasy ; that is, they were to go together to the banks of the 
Susquehanna, in a new country of which they knew nothing 
except by description ; and there they were to realize a 
dream of nature in the golden age — a Platonic republic, 
where everything was to be in common, and from which vice 
and selfishness were to be forever excluded. But these young 
neo-platonists had no money, and so the scheme was given up. 

In 1795 ^^ married Miss Fricker, a milliner of Bristol, 
and made a voyage to Lisbon, where his uncle was chaplain 
to the British Factory. He led an unsettled life until 1804, 
when he established himself at Keswick in the Lake country, 
where he spent his life. He was a literary man and nothing 
else, and perhaps one of the most industrious writers that 
ever held a literary pen. Much of the time, indeed, he 
wrote for magazines and reviews, upon whatever subject was 
suggested to him, to win his daily bread. 
jf 

His Writings. — After the publication of Wat Tyler he 
wrote an epic poem called Joan of Arc, in 1796, which was 
crude and severely criticized. After some other unimportant 
'36 



422 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

essays, he inaugurated his purpose of illustrating the various 
oriental mythologies, by the publication of Thalaba the De- 
stroyer, which was received with great disfavor at the time, 
and which first coupled his name with that of Wordsworth 
as of the school of Lake poets. It is in irregular metre, 
which at first has the charm of variety, but which afterwards 
loses its effect, on account of its broken, disjointed versi- 
fication. In 1805 appeared Madoc — a poem based upon 
the subject of early Welsh discoveries in America. It is a 
long poem in two parts : the one descriptive of Madoc in 
Wales and the other of Madoc in Aztlan. Besides many 
miscellaneous works in prose, we notice the issue, in 1810, of 
The Curse of Kehama — the second of the great mytholog- 
ical poems referred to. 

Among his prose works must be mentioned The Chronicle 
of the Cid, The History of Brazil, The Life of Nelson, and 
The History of the Peninsular War. A little work called 
The Doctor has been greatly liked in America. 

Southey wrote innumerable reviews and magazine articles ; 
and, indeed, tried his pen at every sort of literary work. 
His diction — in prose, at least — is almost perfect, and his 
poetical style not unpleasing. His industry, his learning, 
and his care in production must be acknowledged ; but his 
poems are very little read, and, in spite of his own prophe- 
cies, are doomed to the shelf rather than retained upon the 
table. Like Wordsworth, he was one of the most egotistical 
of men ; he had no greater admirer than Robert Southey ; 
and had his exertions not been equal to his self-laudation, he 
would have been intolerable. 

The most singular instance of perverted taste and unmer- 
ited eulogy is to be found in his Vision of Judgment, which, 
as poet-laureate, he produced to the memory of George the 
Third. The severest criticism upon it is Lord Byron's Vision 
of Judgfnent — reckless, but clever and trenchant. The con- 
sistency and industry of Southey's life caused him to be 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 423 

appointed poet-laureate upon the death of Pye ; and in 1835, 
having declined a baronetcy, he received an annual pension 
of ;z{^3oo. Having lost his first wife in 1837, he married 
Miss Bowles, the poetess, in 1839; but soon after his mind 
began to fail, and he had reached a state of imbecility which 
ended in death on the 21st of March, 1843. ^^ ^^37, at the 
age of sixty-three, he collected and edited his complete 
poetical works, with copious and valuable historical notes. 

Historical Value. — It is easy to see in what manner 
Southey, as a literary man, has reflected the spirit of the age. 
Politically, he exhibits partisanship from Radical to Tory, 
which may be clearly discerned by comparing his IFaf 
Tyler with his Vision of Judgment and his Odes. As to lit- 
erary and poetic canons, his varied metre, and his stories in 
the style of Wordsworth, show that he had abandoned all 
former schools. In his histories and biographies he is pro- 
fessedly historical ; and in his epics he shows that greater 
range of learned investigation which is so characteristic of 
that age. The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba would have 
been impossible in a former age. He himself objected to be 
ranked with the Lakers ; but Wordsworth, Southey, and 
Coleridge have too much in common, notwithstanding much 
individual difference, not to be classed together as innovators 
and asserters, whether we call them Lakers or something else. 

It was on the occasion of his publishing Thalaha, that his 
name was first coupled with that of W^ordsworth. His own 
words are, " I happened to be residing at Keswick when Wx. 
Wordsworth and I began to be acquainted. Mr. Coleridge 
also had resided there ; and this was reason enough for class- 
ing us together as a school of poets." There is not much 
external resemblance, it is true, between Thalaba and the 
Excuj'sion ; but the same poetical motives will cause both to 
remain unread by the multitude — unnatural comparisons, 
recondite theology, and a great lack of common humanity. 



424 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

That there was a mutual admiration is found in Southey's 
declaration that Wordsworth's sonnets contain the profound- 
est poetical wisdom, and that the Preface is the quintessence 
of the philosophy of poetry. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. — More individual, more ec- 
centric, less commonplace, in short, a far greater genius than 
either of his fellows, Coleridge accomplished less, had less 
system, was more visionary and fragmentary than they : he 
had an amorphous mind of vast proportions. The man, in 
his life and conversation, was great; the author has left little 
of value which will last when the memory of his person has 
disappeared. He was born on the 21st of October, 1772, at 
Ottery St. Mary. His father was a clergyman and vicar of 
the parish. He received his education at Christ's Hospital 
in London, where, among others, he had Charles Lamb as a 
comrade, and formed with him a friendship which lasted as 
long as they both lived. 

Early Life. — There he was an erratic student, but always 
a great reader ; and while he was yet a lad, at. the age of 
fourteen, he might have been called a learned man. 

He had little self-respect, and from stress of poverty he 
intended to apprentice himself to a shoemaker ; but friends 
who admired his learning interfered to prevent this, and he 
was sent with a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 
1791. Like Wordsworth and Southey, he was an intense 
Radical at first ; and on this account left college without his 
degree in 1793. He then enlisted as a private in the 15th 
Light Dragoons ; but, although he was a favorite with his 
comrades, whose letters he wrote, he made a very poor sol- 
dier. Having written a Latin sentence under his saddle on 
the stable wall, his superior education was recognized; and 
he was discharged from the service after only four months' 
duty. Eager for adventure, he joined Southey and Lloyd in 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 425 

their scheme of pantisocracy, to which we have already re- 
ferred ; and when that failed for want of money, he married 
the sister-in-law of Southey — Miss Fricker, of Bristol." He 
was at this time a Unitarian as well as a Radical, and offi- 
ciated frequently as a Unitarian minister. His sermons were 
extremely eloquent. He had already published some juve- 
nile poems, and a drama on the fall of Robespierre, and had 
endeavored to establish a periodical called The Watchman. 
He was always erratic, and dependent upon the patronage of 
his friends ; in short, he always presented the sad spectacle 
of a man who could not take care of himself. 

His Writings. — After a residence at Stowey, in Somer- 
setshire, where he wrote some of his finest poem.s, among 
which were the first part of Christabel, The Ancient Mariner, 
and Remorse, a tragedy, he was enabled, through the 
kindness of friends, to go, in 1798, to Germany, where he 
spent fourteen months in the study of literature and meta- 
physics. In the year 1800 he returned to the Lake country, 
where he for some time resided with Southey at Keswick ; 
Wordsworth being then at Grasmere. Then was established 
as a fixed fact in English literature the Lake school of poetry. 
These three poets acted and reacted upon each other. From 
having been great Radicals they became Royalists, and Cole- 
ridge's Unitarian belief was changed into orthodox church- 
manship. His translation of Schiller's WaUenstein should 
rather be called an expansion of that drama, and is full of 
his own poetic fancies. After writing for some time for the 
Morning Post, he went to Malta as the Secretary to the Gov- 
ernor in 1804, at a salary of ^800 per annum. But his 
restless spirit soon drove him back to Grasmere, and to 
desultory efforts to make a livelihood. 

In 1 81 6 he published the two parts of Christabel, an 
unfinished poem, which, for the wildness of the conceit, 
exquisite imagery, and charming poetic diction, stands quite 
36* 



426 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

alone m English literature. In a periodical called The 
Friend, which he issued, are found many of his original 
ideas; but it was discontinued after twenty-seven numbers. 
His Biogj'aphia Literaria, published in 1817^ contains valu- 
able sketches of literary men, living and dead, written w^ith 
rare critical power. 

In his Aids to Reflection, published in 1825, are found his 
metaphysical tenets ; his Table- Talk is also of great literary 
value ; but his lectures on Shakspeare show him to have 
been the most remarkable critic of the great dramatist whom 
the world has produced. 

It has already been mentioned that when the first volume 
of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads was pubHshed, The A?t- 
cient Mai'iner was included in it, as a poem by an anonymous 
friend. It had been the intention of Coleridge to publish 
another poem in the second volume ; but it was considered 
incongruous, and excluded. That poem was the exquisite 
ballad entitled Love, or Genevieve. 

His Helplessness. — With no home of his own, he lived 
by visiting his friends ; left his wife and children to the sup- 
port of others, and seemed incapable of any other than this 
shifting and shiftless existence. This natural imbecility was 
greatly increased during a long period by his constant use of 
opium, which kept him, a greater portion of his life, in a 
world of dreams. He was fortunate in having a sincere and 
appreciative friend in Mr. Oilman, surgeon, near London, to 
whose house he went in 1816; and where, with the excep- 
tion of occasional visits elsewhere, he resided until his death 
in 1834. If the Gilmans needed compensation for their 
kindness, they found it in the celebrity of their visitor; even 
strangers made pilgrimages to the house at Highgate to hear 
the rhapsodies of ''the old man eloquent." Coleridge once 
asked Charles Lamb if he had ever heard him preach, refer- 
ring to the early days when he was a Unitarian preacher. 



WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 42/ 

''I never heard you do anything else," was the answer he 
received. He was the prince of talkers, and talked more 
coherently and connectedly than he wrote : drawing with 
ease from the vast stores of his learning, he delighted men 
of every degree. While of the Lake school of poetry, and 
while in some sort the creature of his age and his surround- 
ings, his eccentricities gave him a rare independence and 
individuality. A giant in conception, he was a dwarf in 
execution ; and something of the interest which attaches to a 
lusus naturce is the chief claim to future reputation which 
belongs to S. T. C. 

Hartley Coleridge, his son, (1796 -1849,) inherited 
much of his father's talents ; but was an eccentric, deformed, 
and, for a time, an intemperate being. His principal writings 
were monographs on various subjects, and articles for Black- 
wood. Henry Nelson Coleridge, (1800- 1843,) ^ nephew 
and son-in-law of the poet, was also a gifted man, and a 
profound classical scholar. His introduction to the study of 
the great classic poets, containing his analysis of Homer's 
epics, is a work of great merit. 



Alfred Tennyson. 
Early Works. 
The Princess. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE REACTION IN POETRY. 



Idyls of the King. I Her Faults. 

Elizabeth B. Browning. Robert Browning. 

Aurora Leigh. Other Poets. 



Tennyson and the Brownings. 

Alfred Tennyson. — It is the certain fate of all extrav- 
agant movements, social or literary, to invite criticism and 
opposition, and to be followed by reaction. The school of 
Wordsworth was the violent protest against what remained of 
the artificial in poetry ; but it had gone, as we have seen, to 
the other extreme. The affected simplicity, and the bald 
diction which it inculcated, while they raised up an army of 
feeble imitators, also produced in the ranks of poetry a vin- 
dication of what was good in the old ; new theories, and a very 
different estimate of poetical subjects and expression. The 
first poet who may be looked upon as leading the reactionary 
party is Alfred Tennyson. He endeavored out of all the 
schools to synthesize a new one. In many of his descriptive 
pieces he followed Wordsworth : in his idyls, he adheres to 
the romantic school ; in his treatment and diction, he stands 
alone. 

Early Efforts. — He was the son of a clergyman of Lin- 
colnshire, and was born at Somersby, in 1810. After a few 
early and almost unknown efforts in verse, the first volume 
bearing his name was issued in 1830, while he was yet an 
under-graduate at Cambridge: it had the simple title — 

428 



THE REACTION IN POETRY. 429 

Poems, chiefly Lyrical. In their judgment of this new poet, 
the critics were almost as much at fault as they had been when 
the first efforts of Wordsworth appeared ; but for very dif- 
ferent reasons. Wordsworth was simple and intensely realistic. 
Tennyson was mystic and ideal : his diction was unusual ; his 
little sketches conveyed an almost hidden moral ; he seemed 
to inform the reader that, in order to understand his poetry, 
it must be studied ; the meaning does not sparkle upon the 
surface ; the language ripples, the sense flows in an under- 
current. His first essays exhibit a mania for finding strange 
words, or coining new ones, which should give melody to his 
verse. Whether this was a process of development or not, 
he has in his later works gotten rid of much of this apparent 
mannerism, while he has retained, and even improved, his 
harmony. He exhibits a rare power of concentration, as 
opposed to the diffusiveness of his contemporaries. Each of 
his smaller poems is a thought, briefly, but forcibly and 
harmoniously, expressed. If it requires some exertion to 
comprehend it, when completely understood it becomes a 
valued possession. 

It is difficult to believe that such poems as Mariana and 
Recollections of the Arabian Nights were the production of 
a young man of twenty. 

In 1833 he published his second volume, containing ad- 
ditional poems, among which were Eiione, The May Queen, 
The Lotos-Eaters, and A Dream of Fair Women. The May 
Queen became at once a favorite, because every one could 
understand it : it touched a chord in every heart ; but his 
rarest power of dreamy fancy is displayed in such pieces as 
The Arabian Nights and the Lotos-Eaters. No greater 
triumph has been achieved in the realm of fancy than that in 
the court of good Haroun al Raschid, and amid the Lotos 
dreams of the Nepenthe coast. These productions were not 
received with the favor which they merited, and so he let the 
critics alone for nine years. In 1842 he again appeared in 



430 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

print, with, among other poems, the exquisite fragment of 
the Morte d' Arthur, Godiva, St. Agnes, Sir Galahad, Lady 
Clara Vere de Vere, The Talking Oak, and chief, perhaps, 
of all, Locksley Hall. In these poems he is not only a poet, 
but a philosopher. Each of these is an 'extended apothegm, 
presenting not only rules of life, but mottoes and maxims for 
daily use. They are soliloquies of the nineteenth century, 
and representations of its men and conditions. 

The Princess. — In 1847 he published The Princess, a 
Medley — a pleasant and suggestive poem on woman's rights, 
in which exquisite songs are introduced, which break the 
monotony of the blank verse, and display his rare lyric 
power. The Bugle Song is among the finest examples of the 
adaptation of sound to sense in the language ; and there is 
nothing more truthful and touching than the short verses 
beginning, 

Home they brought her warrior dead. 

Arthur Hallam, a gifted son of the distinguished historian, 
who was betrothed to Tennyson's sister, died young ; and the 
poet has mourned and eulogized him in a long poem entitled 
In Memoj'iam. It contains one hundred and twenty-nine 
four-lined stanzas, and is certainly very musical and finished ; 
but it is rather the language of calm philosophy elaborately 
studied, than that of a poignant grief. It is not, in our 
judgment, to be compared with his shorter poems, and is 
generally read and overpraised only by his more ardent ad- 
mirers, who discover a crystal tear of genuine emotion in 
every stanza. 

Idyls of the King. — The fragment on the death of 
Arthur, already mentioned, foreshadowed a purpose of the 
poet's mind to make the legends of that almost fabulous 
monarch a vehicle for modern philosophy in English verse. 



THE REACTION IN POETRY. 43I 

In 1859 appeared a volume containing the Idyls of the King. 
They are rather minor epics than idyls. The simple mate- 
rials are taken from the Welsh and French chronicles, and 
are chiefly of importance in that they cater to that English 
taste which finds. national greatness typified in Arthur. It had 
been a successful stratagem with Spenser in The Fairy Queen, 
and has served Tennyson equally well in the Idyls, It unites 
the ages of fable and of chivalry ; it gives a noble lineage to 
heroic deeds. The best is the last — Gidneve7'e — almost the 
perfection of pathos in -poetry. The picturesqueness of his 
descriptions is evinced by the fact that Gustave Dore has 
chosen these Idyls as a subject for illustration, and has been 
eminently successful in his labor. 

Maud, which appeared in 1855, notwithstanding some 
charming lyrical passages, may be considered Tennyson's 
failure. In 1869 he completed The Idyls by publishing The 
Cojning of Arthur, The Holy Grail, and Pelleas and Etteare. 
He also finished the Morte d' Arthur, and put it in its proper 
place as The Passing of Arthur. 

Tennyson was appointed poet-laureate upon the death of 
Wordsworth, in 1850, and receives besides a pension of 
;j{^2oo. He lived for a long time in great retirement at Far- 
ringford, on the Isle of Wight; but has lately removed to 
Petersfield, in Hampshire. It may be reasonably doubted 
whether this hermit-life has not injured his poetical powers ; 
whether, great as he really is, a little inhalation of the air of 
busy every-day life would not have infused more of nature 
and freshness into his verse. Among his few Odes are that 
on the death of the Duke of Wellington, the dedication of 
his poems to the Queen, and his welcome to Alexandra, 
Princess of Wales, all of which are of great excellence. His 
Charge of the light Brigade, at Balaclava, while it gave 
undue currency to that stupid military blunder, must rank as 
one of the finest battle-lyrics in the language. 

The poetry of Tennyson is eminently representative of the 



432 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Victorian age. He has written little ; but that ifttle marks a 
distinct era in versification — great harmony untrammelled by 
artificial correctness ; and in language, a search for novelty 
to supply the wants and correct the faults of the poetic vocab- 
ulary. He is national in the Idyls ; philosophic in The Two 
Voices, and similar poems. The Princess is a gentle satire on 
the age ; and though, in striving for the reputation of origi- 
nality, he sometimes mistakes the original for the beautiful, 
he is really the laurelled poet of England in merit as well as 
in title. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. — The literary usher is 
now called upon to cry with the herald of the days of chiv- 
alry — Place aux dames. A few ladies, as we have seen, have 
already asserted for themselves respectable positions in the 
literary ranks. Without a question as to the relative gifts of 
mind in man and woman, we have now reached a name 
which must rank among those of the first poets of the present 
century — one which represents the Victorian age as fully and 
forcibly as Tennyson, and with more of novelty than he. 
Nervous in style, elevated in diction, bold in expression, 
learned and original, Mrs. Browning divides the poetic 
renown of the period with Tennyson. If he is the laureate, 
she was the acknowledged queen of poetry until her untimely 
death. 

Miss Elizabeth Barrett was born in London, in 1809. She 
was educated with great care, and began to write at a very 
early age. A volume, entitled Essays ojt Mind, with Other 
Poems, was published when she was only seventeen. In 1833 
she produced Prometheus Bound, a translation of the drama 
of ^Eschylus from the original Greek, which exhibited rare 
classical attainments ; but which she considered so faulty that 
she afterwards retranslated it. In 1838 appeared The Sera- 
phim, and other Poems ; and in 1839, The Romaunt of the 
Page. Not long after, the rupture of a blood-vessel brought 



THE REACTION IN POETRY. 433 

her to the verge of the grave ; and while she was still in a 
precarious state of health, her favorite brother was drowned. 
For several years she lived secluded, studying and com- 
posing when her health permitted ; and especially drawing 
her inspiration from original sources in Greek and Hebrew. 
In 1844 ^he published her collected poems in two volumes. 
Among these was Lady Geraldine s Courtship : an exquisite 
story, the perusal of which is said to have induced Robert 
Browning to seek her acquaintance. Her health was now 
partially restored ; and they were married in 1846. For 
some time they resided at Florence, in a congenial and happy 
union. The power of passionate love is displayed in her 
Sonnets from the Portuguese, which are among the finest in 
the language. Differing in many respects from those of 
Shakspeare, they are like his in being connected by one im- 
passioned thought, and being, without doubt, the record of a 
heart experience. 

Thoroughly interested in the social and political conditions 
of struggling Italy, she gave vent to her views and sympathies 
in a volume of poems, entitled Casa Guidi Windows. Casa 
Guidi was the nam.e of their residence in Florence, and the 
poems vividly describe what she saw from its windows — divers 
forms of suffering, injustice, and oppression, which touched 
the heart of a tender woman and a gifted poet, and com- 
pelled it to burst forth in song. 

Aurora Leigh. — But by far the most important work of 
Mrs. Browning is Aurora Leigh : a long poem in nine books, 
which appeared in 1856, in which the great questions of the 
age, social and moral, are handled with great boldness. It 
is neither an epic, nor an idyl, nor a tale in verse : it com- 
bines features of them all. It presents her clear convictions 
of life and art, and is full of philosophy, largely expressed 
in the language of irony and sarcasm. She is an inspired 
advocate of the intellectual claims of woman ; and the poem 
37 2C 



434 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

is, in some degree, an autobiography : the identity of the 
poet and the heroine gives a great charm to the narrative. 
There are few finer pieces of poetical inspiration than the 
closing scene, where the friend and lover returns blind and 
helpless, and the woman's heart, unconquered before, sur- 
renders to the claims of misfortune as the champion of love. 
After a happy life with her husband and an only child, 
sent for her solace, this gifted woman died in 1863. 

Her Faults. — It is as easy to criticize Mrs. Browning's 
works as to admire them ; but our admiration is great in 
spite of her faults : in part because of them, for they are 
faults of a bold and striking individuality. There is some- 
times an obscurity in her fancies, and a turgidity in her 
language. She seems to transcend the poet's license with a 
knowledge that she is doing so. For example : 

We will sit on the throne of a purple sublimity, 
And grind down men's bones to a pale unanimity. 

And again, in speaking of Goethe, she says : 

Ilis soul reached out from far and high, 
And fell from inner entity. 

Her rhymes are frequently and arrogantly faulty : she 
seems to scorn the critics ; she writes more for herself than 
for others, and infuses all she writes with her own fervent 
spirit : there is nothing commonplace or lukewarm. She is 
so strong that she would be masculine ; but so tender that 
she is entirely feminine : at once one of the most vigorous of 
poets and one of the best of women. She has attained the 
first rank among the English poets. 

Robert Browning. ■ — As a poet of decided individuality, 
which has gained for him many admirers. Browning claims 
particular mention. His happy marriage has for his fame 



THE REACTION IN POETRY. 435 

the disadvantage that he gave his name to a greater poet ; and 
it is never mentioned without an instinctive thought of her 
superiority. Many who are familiar with her verses have 
never read a line of her husband. This is in part due to a 
mysticism and an intense subjectivity, -which are not adapted 
to the popular comprehension. He has chosen subjects un- 
known or uninteresting to the multitude of readers, and treats 
them with such novelty of construction and such an affecta- 
tion of originality, that few persons have patience to read his 
poems. 

Robert Browning was born, in 1812, at Camberwell ; and 
after a careful education, not at either of the universities, 
(for he was a dissenter,) he went at the age of twenty to Italy, 
where he eagerly studied the history and antiquity to be 
found in the monasteries and in the remains of the mediaeval 
period. He also made a sttidy of the Italian people. In 
1835 he published a drama called Paracelsus^ founded upon 
the history of that celebrated alchemist and physician, and 
delineating the conditions of philosophy in the fifteenth cen- 
tury. It is novel, antique, and metaphysical : it exhibits the 
varied emotions of human sympathy ; but it is eccentric and 
obscure, and cannot be popular. He has been called the 
poet for poets ; and this statement seems to imply that he is 
not the poet for the great world. 

In 1837 he published a tragedy called Strafford ; but his 
Italian culture seems to have spoiled his powers for portraying 
English character, and he has presented a stilted Strafford and 
a theatrical Charles I. 

In 1840 appeared Sordello, founded upon incidents in the 
•history of that jMantuan poet Sordello, whom Dante and 
Virgil met in purgatory ; and who, deserting the language of 
Italy, wrote his principal poems in the Provencal. The critics 
were so dissatisfied with this work, that Browning afterwards 
omitted it in the later editions of his poems. In 1843 ^""^ 
published a tragedy entitled A Blot 071 the 'Scutcheon, and a 



43^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

play called The Dutchess of Cleves. In 1850 appeared 
Christmas Eve and Easter Day. Concerning all these, it 
may be said that it is singular and sad that a real poetic gift, 
like that of Browning, should be so shrouded with faults of 
conception and expression. What leads us to think that 
many of these are an affectation, is that he has produced, 
almost with the simplicity of Wordsworth, those charming 
sketches, The Goad Neivs from Ghent to Aix, and An In- 
cident at Ratisbon. 

Among his later poems Ave specially commend A Death in 
the Desert, and ^J^_g^4issjes, as less obscure and more inter- 
esting than any, except the lyrical pieces just mentioned. It 
is difficult to show in what manner Browming represents his 
age. His works are only so far of a modern character that 
they use the language of to-day without subsidizing its sim- 
plicity, and abandon the old musical couplet without present- 
ing the intelligible if commonplace thought which it used to 
convey. 

Other Poets of the Latest Period. 

Reginald Heber, 1783-1826: a godly Bishop of Calcutta. He is most 
generally known by one effort, a little poem, which is a universal 
favorite, and has preached, from the day it appeared, eloquent sermons 
in the cause of missions — From GreenlancT s Icy ^fountains. Among 
his other hynms are Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Mortiing, and 
The Son of God goes forth to War. 

Barry Cornwall, bom 1790 : this is a no77i de plume of Bryan Proctor, 
a pleasing, but not great poet. His principal works are Dramatic 
Scenes, Mirandola, a tragedy, and Marcian Colonna. His minor poems 
are characterized by grace and fluency. Among these are The Return 
of the Admiral ; The Sea, the Sea, the Open Sea; and y^ Petition to 
Time. He also wrote essays and tales in prose — 2l Life of Edinund 
Keane, and a Memoir of Charles Lamb. His daughter, Adelaide 
Anjie Proctor, is a gifted poetess, and has written, among other poems, 
Legends and Lyrics, and A Chaplet of Verses. 

James Sheridan Knowles, 1 784- 1 862 : an actor and dramatist. He left 
the stage and became a Baptist minister. His plays were very success- 
ful upon the stage. Among them, those of chief merit are The Hunch- 



THE REACTION IN POETRY. .437 

back, Virginius and Cains Gracchus, and The Wife, a Tale of 
Matitiia. 

Jean Ingelow, born 1830: one of the most popular of the later English 
poets. The Song of Seven, and My Sons Wife Elizabeth, are extremely 
pathetic, and of such general application that they touch all hearts. 
The latter is the refrain of High Tide on the Coast of Lancashire. She 
has published, besides, several volumes of stories for children, and one 
entitled Stzidies for Sturia. 

Algernon Charles Swiiibiirne, born 1S43: he is principally and very 
favorably known by his charming poem Atalanta in Calydon. He has 
also written a somewhat heterodox and licentious poem entitled Laiis 
Veneris, Chastclard, and The Song of Italy ; besides numerous minor 
poems and articles for magazines. He is among the most notable and 
prolific poets of the age ; and we may hope for many and belter works 
from his pen. 

Richard Harris Barham, 1 788-1 845 : a clerg)'man of the Church of 
England, and yet one of the most humorous of writers. He is chieily 
known by his Ingoldsby Legends, which were contributed to the maga- 
zines. They are humorous tales in prose and verse ; the latter in the 
vein of Peter Pindar, but better than those of Wolcot, or any writer of 
that school. Combined with the humorous and often forcible, there are 
touches of pathos and terror which are extremely elective. He also 
wrote a novel called My Cousin A'^icholas. 

Philip James Bailey, horn 1816: he published, in 1839, Festus, a poem 
in dramatic form, having, for its dramatis personcz, God in his three per- 
sons, Lucifer, angels, and man. Full of rare poetic fancy, it repels 
many by the boldness of its flight in the consideration of the incompre- 
hensible, which many minds think the forbidden. The Angel World 
and The Mystic are of a similar kind; but his last work. The Age, a 
Colloquial Satire, is on a mundane subject and in a simpler style. 

Charles Mackay, born 1812 : principally known by his fugitive pieces, 
which contain simple thoughts on pleasant language. His poetical col- 
lections are called Town Lyrics and Egeria. 

John Keble, 1792-1866: the modern George Herbert; a distinguished 
ciex-g)'man. He \vas Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and produced, 
besides Tracts for the Times, and other theological writings, The 
Cht'istian Year, containing a poem for every Sunday and holiday in 
the ecclesiastical year. They are devout breathings in beautiful verse, 
and are known and loved by great numbers out of his own communion. 
Many of them have been adopted as hymns in many collections. 

Martin' Farquhar Tupper, bom 1810: his principal work vi Proverbial 
37* 



438 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



Philosophy , m two series. It was iinwontedly popular; and Tupper's 
name was on every tongue. Suddenly, the world reversed its decision 
and discarded its favorite ; so that, without having done anything to 
warrant the desertion, Tupper finds himself with but very few ad- 
mirers, or even readers : so capricious is the vox populi. The poetry 
is not without merit ; but the world cannot forgive itself for having 
rated it too high. 
Matthew Arnold, born 1822: the son of Doctor Arnold of Rugby. He 
has written numerous critical papers, and was for some time Professor 
of Poetry at Oxford. Sorab and Rusta77i is an Eastern tale in 
verse, of great beauty. His other works are The Strayed Reveller, 
and Empedocles on Etna. More lately, an Inspector of Schools, he 
has produced several works on education, among which are Popular 
Education in France and The Schools and Universities of the Continent. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE LATER HISTORIANS. 

New Materials. Lord Macaulay Thomas Carlyle. 

George Grote. History of England. Life of Frederick IL 

History of Greece. Its Faults. Other Historians. 

New Materials. 

NOTHING more decidedly marks the nineteenth cen- 
tury than the progress of history as a branch of 
literature. A wealth of material, not known before, was 
brought to light, increasing our knowledge and reversing 
time-honored decisions upon historic points. Countries were 
explored and their annals discovered. Expeditions to Egypt 
found a key to hieroglyphs ; State papers were arranged to 
the hand of the scholar; archives, like those of Simancas, 
were thrown open. The progress of Truth, through the ex- 
tension of education, unmasked ancient prescriptions and 
prejudices : thus, where the chronicle remained, philosophy 
was transformed ; and it became evident that the history of 
man in all times must be written anew, with far greater light 
to guide the writer than the preceding century had enjoyed. 
Besides, the world of readers became almost as learned as the 
historian himself, and he wrote to supply a craving and a 
demand such as had never before existed. A glance at the 
labors of the following historians will show that they were not 
only annalists, but reformers in the full sense of the word : they 
re-wrote what had been written before, supplying defects and 
correcting errors. 

439 



440 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

George Grote. — This distinguished writer was born near 
London, in 1794. He was the son of a banker, and received 
his education at the Charter House. Instead of entering 
one of the universities, he became a clerk in his father's 
banking-house. Early imbued with a taste for Greek liter- 
ature, he continued his studies with great zeal ; and was for 
many years collecting the material for a history of Greece. 
The subject was quietly and thoroughly digested in his mind 
before he began to write. A member of Parliament from 
1832 to 1 841, he was always a strong Whig, and was specially 
noted for his championship of the vote by ballot. There was 
no department of wholesome reform which he did not 
sustain. He opposed the corn laws, which had become 
oppressive ; he favored the political rights of the Jews, and 
denounced prescriptive evils of every kind. 

History of Greece. — In 1846 he published the first 
volume of his History of Greece from the Earliest Period to 
the Death of Alexander the Great: the remaining volumes 
appeared between that time and 1856. The work was well 
received by critics of all political opinions ; and the world 
was astonished that such a labor should have been performed 
by any writer who was not a university man. It was a 
luminous ancient history, in a fresh and racy modern style : 
the review of the mythology is grand; the political condi- 
tions, the manners and customs of the people, the military 
art, the progress of law, the schools of philosophy, are 
treated with remarkable learning and clearness. But he as 
clearly exhibits the political condition of his own age, by the 
sympathy which he displays towards the democracy of 
Athens in their struggles against the tenets and actions of 
the aristocracy. The historian writes from his own political 
point of view ; and Grote's history exhibits his own views of 
reform as plainly as that of Mitford sets forth his aristocratic 
proclivities. Thus the English politics of the age play a part 
in the Grecian history. 



THE LATER HISTORIANS. 44I 

There were several histories of Greece written not long 
before that of Grote, which may be considered as now set 
aside by his greater accuracy and better style. Among these 
the principal are that of John Gillies, i 747-1836, which 
is learned, but statistical and dry ; that of Connop Thirl- 
WALL, born 1797, Bishop of St. David's, which was greatly 
esteemed by Grote himself; and that of William Mitford, 
1 744-1827, to correct the errors and supply the deficiencies 
of which, Grote's work was written. 

LoRl) Macaulay. — Thomas Babington Macaulay was born 
at Rothley, in Leicestershire, on the 25th of October, 1800. 
His father, Zachary Macaulay, a successful West Indian 
merchant, devoted his later life to philanthropy. His mother 
was Miss Selina Mills, the daughter of a bookseller of Bristol. 
After an early education, chiefly conducted at home, he was 
entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1818, where he 
distinguished himself as a debater, and gained two prize 
poems and a scholarship. He was graduated in 1822, and 
aftei-wards continued his studies ; producing, during the next 
four years, several of his stirring ballads. He began to write 
for the Edinburgh Review in 1825. In 1830 he entered 
Parliament, and was immediately noted for his brilliant 
oratory in advocating liberal principles. In 1834 he was 
sent to India, as a member of the Supreme Council ; and 
took a prominent part in preparing an Indian code of laws. 
This code was published on his return to England, in 1838; 
but it was so kind and considerate to the natives, that the 
martinets in India defeated its adoption. From his return 
until 1847, he had a seat in Parliament as member for Edin- 
burgh ; but in the latter year his support of the grant to the 
Maynooth (Roman Catholic) College so displeased his con- 
stituents, that in the next election he lost his seat. 

During all these busy years he had been astonishing and 
delighting the reading world by his truly brilliant papers in 



442 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the Edinburgh Review, which have been collected and pub- 
lished as Miscellanies. The subjects were of general interest ; 
their treatment novel and bold ; the learning displayed was 
accurate and varied ; and the style pointed, vigorous, and 
harmonious. The papers upon Clive and Hastings are 
enriched by his intimate knowledge of Indian affairs, ac- 
quired during his residence in that country. His critical 
papers are severe and satirical, such as the articles on Croker' s 
Boswell, and on Mr. Robert Montgomery^ s Poems. His un- 
usual self-reliance as a youth led him to great vehemence in 
the expression of his opinions, as well as into er^Drs of 
judgment, which he afterwards regretted. The radicalism 
which is displayed in his essay on Milton was greatly modified 
when he came to treat of kindred subjects in his History. 

The History of England. — He had long cherished the 
intention of writing the history of England, "from the 
accession of James H. down to a time which is within the 
memory of men still living." The loss of his election at 
Edinburgh gave him the leisure necessary for carrying out 
this purpose. In 1848 he published the first and second 
volumes, which at once achieved an unprecedented popu- 
larity. His style had lost none of its brilliancy ; his reading 
had been immense; his examination of localities was careful 
and minute. It was due, perhaps, to this growing fame, that 
the electors of Edinburgh, without any exertion on his part, 
returned him to Parliament in 1852. In 1855 the third and 
fourth volumes of his History appeared, bringing the work 
down to the peace of Ryswick, in 1697. All England ap- 
plauded the crown when he was elevated to the peerage, in 
1857, as Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 

It was now evident that Macaulay had deceived himself as 
to the magnitude of his subject ; at least, he was never to 
finish it. He died suddenly of disease of the heart, on the 
28th of December, 1859; and all that remained of his His- 



THE LATER HISTORIANS. 443 

tory was a fragmentary volume, published after his death by 
his sister, Lady Trevelyan, which reaches the death of 
William III., in 1702. 

Its Faults. — The faults of Macaulay's History spring 
from the character of the man : he is always a partisan or a 
bitter enemy. His heroes are angels ; tiiose whom he dis- 
likes ape devils ; and he pursues them with the ardor of a 
crusader or the vendetta of a Corsican. The Stuarts are 
painted in the darkest colors ; while his eulogy of William 
III. is fulsome and false. He blackens the character of 
Marlborough for real faults indeed ; but for such as Marl- 
borough had in common with thousands of his contemporaries. 
If, as has been said, that great captain deserved the greatest 
censure as a statesman and warrior, it is equally true, paradox- 
ical as it may seem, that he deserved also the greatest praise 
in both capacities. Macaulay has fulminated the censure and 
withheld the praise. 

What is of more interest to Americans, he loses no oppor- 
tunity of attacking and defaming William Penn ; making 
statements which have been proved false, and attributing 
motives without reason or justice. 

His style is what the French call the style coitpe, — short 
sentences, like those of Tacitus, which ensure the interest by 
their recurring shocks. He writes history wilh the pen of a 
reviewer, and gives verdicts witll the authority of a judge. 
He seems to say. Believe the autocrat ; do not venture to 
philosophize. 

His poetry displays tact and talent, but no genius ; it is 
pageantry in verse. His Lays of Ancient Rome are scholarly, 
of course, and pictorial in description, but there is little of 
nature, and they are theatrical rather than dramatic ; they are 
to be declaimed rather than to be read or sung. 

In society, Macaulay was a great talker — he harangued his 
friends ; and there was more than wit in the saying of Sidney 



444 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Smith, that his conversation would have been improved by a 
few ''brilliant flashes of silence." 

But in spite of his faults, if we consider the profoundness 
of his learning, the industry of his studies, and the splendor 
of his style, we must acknowledge him as the most distin- 
guished of English historians. No one has yet appeared 
who is worthy to complete the magnificent work which he left 
unfinished. 

Thomas Carlyle. — A literary brother of a very different 
type, 'but of a more distinct individuality, is Carlyle, who was 
born in Dumfries-shire, Scotland, in 1795. He was the eldest 
son of a farmer. After a partial education at home, he entered 
the University of Edinburgh, where he was noted for his at- 
tainments in mathematics, and for his ornnivorous reading. 
After leaving the university he became a teacher in a private 
family, and began to study for the ministry, a plan which he 
soon gave up. 

His first literary effort was a Life of Schiller, issued in num- 
bers of the London Magazine, in 1823-4. He turned his at- 
tention to German literature, in the knowledge of which he 
has surpassed all other Englishmen. He became as German 
as the Germans. 

In 1826 he married, and removed to Craigen-Puttoch, on 
a farm, where, in isolation and amid the wildness of nature, 
he studied, and wrote articles for the Edinburgh Review, the 
Foreign Quarterly, and some of the monthly magazines. His 
study of the German, acting upon an innate peculiarity, began 
to affect his style very sensibly, as is clearly seen in the singu- 
lar, introverted, parenthetical mode of expression which per- 
vades all his later works. His earlier writings are in ordinary 
English, but specimens of Carlylese may be found in his Sartor 
Resartus, which at first appalled the publishers and repelled 
the general reader. Taking man's clothing as a nominal sub- 
ject, he plunges into philosophical speculations with which 



i* 



THE LATER HISTORIANS. 445 



clothes have nothing to do, but which informed the world 
that an original thinker and a novel and curious writer had 
appeared. 

In 1834 he removed to Chelsea, near London, where he 
has since resided. In 1837, he published his French Revolu- 
tio7t, in three volumes, — The Bastile, The Constitution, The 
Guillotine. It is a fiery, historical drama rather than a his- 
tory ; full of rhapsodies, startling rhetoric, disconnected pic- 
tures. It has been fitly called ''a history in flashes of light- 
ning." No one could learn from it the history of that 
momentous period ; but one who has read the history else- 
where, will find great interest in Carlyle's wild and vivid pic- 
tures of its stormy scenes. 

In 1839 he wrote, in his dashing style, upon Chartism, and 
about the same time read a course of lectures upon Heroes, 
Hero- Worship, and the Heroic ift History, in which he is an 
admirer of will and impulse, and palliates evil when found in 
combination with these. 

In 1845 ^^ edited The Letters and Speeches of Oliver 
Cromwell, and in his extravagant eulogies worships the hero 
rather than the truth. 

Frederick II. — In 1858 appeared the first two volumes 
of The Life of Frede?'ick the Great, and since that time he 
has completed the work. This is doubtless his greatest effort. 
It is full of erudition, and contains details not to be found in 
any other biography of the Prussian monarch; but so singu- 
larly has he reasoned and commented upon his facts, that the 
enlightened reader often draws conclusions different from 
those which the author has been laboring to establish. While 
the history shows that, for genius and success, Frederick de- 
served to be called the Great, Carlyle cannot make us believe 
that he was not grasping, selfish, a dissembler, and an immoral 
man. 

The author's style has its admirers, and is a not unpleasing 
38 



44^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

novelty and variety to lovers of plain English ; but it wearies 
in continuance, and one turns to French or German with re- 
lief. The Essays upon German Literature, Richter, and The 
Niebelungen Ltedd^ro. of great value to the young student. Such 
tracts as Fast and Present, and The Latter-Day Pamphlets, 
have caused him to be called the *' Censor of the Age." He 
is too eccentric and prejudiced to deserve the name in its best 
meaning. If he fights shams, he sometimes mistakes wind- 
mills and wine-skins for monsters, and, what is worse, if he 
accost a shepherd or a milkmaid, they at once become Amadis 
de Gau/ 2ind Dulcinea del Toboso. In spite of these prejudices 
and peculiarities, Carlyle will always be esteemed for his 
arduous labors, his honest intentions, and his boldness in ex- 
pressing his opinions. His likes and dislikes find ready vent 
in his written judgments, and he cares for neither friend nor 
foe, in setting forth his views of men and events. On many 
subjects it must be said his views are just. There are fields in 
which his word must be received with authority. 

Other Historians of the Latest Period. 

John Lingaj'd, 1771-1851 : a Roman Catholic priest. He was a man of 
great probity and worth. His chief work is A History of England, from 
the first invasion of the Romans to the accession of WiHiam and Mary. 
With a natural leaning to his own religious side in the great political 
questions, he displays great industry in collecting material, beauty of 
diction, and honesty of purpose. His history is of particular value, in 
that it stands among the many Protestant histories as the champion of 
the Roman Catholics, and gives an opportunity to " hear the other side," 
which could not have had a more respectable advocate. In all the 
great controversies, the student of English history must consult Lingard, 
and collate his facts and opinions with those of the other historians. 
He wrote, besides, numerous theological and controversial works. 

Patrick Fraser Tytler, 1 791-1849: the author of y^ History of Scotland 
from Alexander III. to James VI. [James I. of England), and A His- 
tory of England during the reigns of Edward VI. and Majy. His 
Universal History has been used as a text-book, and in style and con- 
struction has great merit, although he does not rise to the dignity of a 
philosophic historian. 



THE LATER HISTORIANS. 44/ 

Sir William Francis Patrick A^apier, 1 785-1 866 : a distinguished soldier, 
and, like Caesar, a historian of the war in which he took part. His 
History of the War in the Peninsula stands quite alone. It is clear in 
its strategy and tactics, just to the enemy, and peculiar but effective in 
style. It was assailed by several military men, but he defended all his 
positions in bold replies to their strictures, and the work remains as 
authority upon the great struggle which he relates. 

Lord Mahon, Earl of Stanhope, born 1 805 : his principal work is a History 
of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles. He 
had access to much new material, and from the Stuart papers has drawn 
much of interest with reference to that unfortunate family. His view 
of the conduct of Washington towards Major Andre has been shown to 
be quite untenable. He also wrote a History of the War of Succession 
in Spain. 

Hetiry Thomas Buchle, 1822-1S62: he was the author of a History of 
Civilization, of which he published two volumes, the work remaining 
unfinished at the time of his death. For bold assumptions, vigorous 
style, and great reading, this work must be greatly admired; but all his 
theories are based on second principles, and Christianity, as a divine 
institution, is ignored. It stai-tled the world into admiration, but has 
not retained the place in popular esteem which it appeared at first to 
make for itself. He is the English Coj?ite, without the eccentricity of 
his model. 

Sir Archibald Alison, 1 792-1 867 : he is the author of The History of 
Europe from the Commejicejuejit of the French Revolution to the Resto- 
ration of the Bourbons, and a continuation from 1815 to 1852. It may 
be doubted whether even the most dispassionate scholar can write 
the history of contemporary events. We may be thankful for the great 
mass of facts he has collated, but his work is tinctured with his high 
Tory principles ; his material is not well digested, and his style is 
clumsy. 

Agnes Strickland, horn 1806: after several early attempts Miss Strickland 
began her great task, which she executed nobly — The Queens of Eng- 
land. Accurate, philosophic, anecdotal, and entertaining, this work 
ranks among the most valuable histories in English. If the style is not 
so nervous as that of masculine writers, there is a ready intuition as to 
the rights and the motives of the queens, and a great delicacy combined 
with entire lack of prudery in her treatment of their crimes. The library 
of English history would be singularly incomplete without Miss Strick- 
land's work. She also wrote The Queens of Scotland, 2SidL The Bachelor 
Kings of England. 



448 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Henry Hallam, 1 778-1 859: the principal works of this judicious and 
learned writer are A View of Europe during the Middle Ages, The Con- 
stitutional Histojy of Ell gland, and An Introduction to the Literature of 
Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. With the 
skill of an advocate he combines the calmness of a judge; and he has 
been justly called "the accurate Hallam," because his facts are in all 
cases to be depended on. By his clear and illustrative treatment of dry 
subjects, he has made them interesting; and his works have done as 
much to instruct his age as those of any writer. Later researches in 
literature and constitutional history may discover more than he has pre- 
sented, but he taught the new explorers the way, and will always be 
consulted with profit, as the representative of this varied learning dur- 
ing the first half of the nineteenth century. 

jfames Anthony Froude, born 1818 : an Oxford graduate, Mr. Froude repre- 
sents the Low Church party in a respectable minority. His chief work 
is A History of England fro?n the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Eliza- 
beth. With great industry, and the style of a successful novelist in 
making his groups and painting his characters, he has written one of 
the most readable books published in this period. He claimed to take 
his authorities from unpublished papers, and from the statute-books, and 
has endeavored to show that Henry VIII. was by no means a bad king, 
and that Elizabeth had veiy few faults. His treatment of Anne Boleyn 
and Mary Queen of Scots is unjust and ignoble. Not content with pub- 
lishing what has been written in their disfavor, with the omniscience of 
a romancer, he asserts their motives, and produces thoughts which they 
never uttered. A race of powerful critics has sprung forth in defence 
of Mary, and Mr. Froude's inaccuracies and injustice have been clearly 
shown. To novel readers who are fond of the sensational, we commend 
his work ; to those who desire histoiic facts and philosophies, we pro- 
claim it to be inaccurate, illogical, and unjust in the highest degree. 

Sharon Turner, 1 768-1 847 : among many historical efforts, principally 
concerning England in different periods, his History of the Anglo- 
Saxons stands out prominently as a great work. He was an eccentric 
scholar, and an antiquarian, and he found just the place to delve in 
when he undertook that history. The style is not good — too epi- 
grammatic and broken; but his research is great, his speculations bold, 
and his information concerning the numbers, manners, arts, learning, 
and other characters of the Anglo-Saxons, immense. The student of 
English history must read Turner for a knowledge of the Saxon period. 

Thomas Arjiold, 1 795-1832: widely known and revered as the Great 
Schoolmaster, He was head-master at Rugby, and influenced his pupils 



THE LATER HISTORIANS. 449 

more than any modern English instructor. Accepting the views of 
Niebuhr, he wrote a work on Roman History up to the close of the 
second Punic war. But he is more generally known by his histoiical 
lectures delivered at Oxford, where he was Professor of Modern His- 
tory. A man of original views and great honesty of purpose, his influ- 
ence in England has been strengthened by the excellent biography 
written by his friend Dean Stanley. 

Williatfi Hepworth Dixon, born 1821 : he was for some time editor of The 
AthencEwii, In historic biography he appears as a champion of men 
who have been maligned by former writers. He vindicates Willia?7i 
Penn from the aspersions of Lord Macaulay, and Bacon from the 
charges of meanness and corruption. 

Charles Mei-ivale, hoxn 1808: he is a clergyman, and a late Fellow of 
Cambridge, and is favorably known by his admirable work entitled, 
The History of the Romans under the Ejupire. It forms an introduction 
to Gibbon, and displays a thorough grasp of the great epoch, varied 
scholarship, and excellent taste. His analyses of Roman literature are 
very valuable, and his pictures of social life so vivid that we seem to 
live in the times of the Csesars as we read. 
38* 2D 



CHAPTER XL. 

THE LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 



Bulwer. 

Changes In Writing 
Dickens's Novels. 
American Notes. 



His Varied Powers. 
Second Visit to America. 
Thackeray. 
Vanity Fair. 



Henry Esmond. 
The Newcomes. 
The Georges. 
Estimate of his Powers, 



THE great feature in the realm of prose fiction, since the 
appearance of the works of Richardson, Fielding, and 
Smollett, had been the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott ; 
but these apart, the prose romance had not played a brilliant 
part in literature until the appearance of Bulwer, who began, 
in his youth, to write novels in the old style ; but who under- 
went several organic changes in modes of thought and ex- 
pression, and at last stood confessed as the founder of a new 
school. 

Bulwer. — Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer was a 
younger son of General Bulwer of Heydon Hall, Norfolk, 
England. He was born, in 1806, to wealth and ease, but 
was early and always a student. Educated at Cambridge, he 
took the Chancellor's prize for a poem on Sculpture. His first 
public effort was a volume of fugitive poems, called Weeds 
and Wild Flowers, of more promise than merit. In 1827 
he published Falkland, and very soon after Felham, or the 
Adventures of a Gentleman. The first was not received favor- 
ably ; but Felham was at once popular, neither for the skill of 
the plot nor for its morality, but because it describes the 
character, dissipations, and good qualities of a fashionable 
young man, which are always interesting to an English public. 
Those novels that immediately followed are so alike in general 

450 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 45 1 

features that they may be called the Pelham series. Of these 
the principal are The Disowned, Devereux, and Paul Clifford 

— the last of which throws a sentimental, rosy light upon the 
person and adventures of a highwayman ; but it is too unreal 
to have done as much injury as the Pirate' s Own Book, or 
the Adventures of Jack Sheppard. It may be safely asserted 
that Paul Clifford never produced a highwayman. Of the 
same period is Eugene Aram, founded upon the true story of 
a scholar who was a murderer — a painful subject powerfully 
handled. 

In 1 83 1 Bulwer entered Parliament, and seems to have at 
once commenced a new life. With his public duties he com- 
bined severe historical study ; and the novels he now produced 
gave witness of his riper and better learning. Chief among 
these were Rienzi, and The Last Days of Pompeii. The 
former is based upon the history of that wonderful and unfor- 
tunate man who, in the fourteenth century, attempted to re- 
store the Roman republic, and govern it like an ancient 
tribune. The latter is a noble production : he has caught 
the very spirit of the day in which Pompeii was submerged 
by the lava-flood ; his characters are masterpieces of historic 
delineation ; he handles like an adept the conflicting theolo- 
gies. Christian, Roman, and Egyptian ; and his natural scenes 

— Vesuvius in fury, the Bay of Naples in the lurid light, the 
crowded amphitheatre, and the terror which fell on man and 
beast, gladiator and lion — are chef-d' ceuvres of Romantic 
art. 

Changes in Writing. — For a time he edited The New 
Monthly Magazine, and a change came over the spirit of his 
novels. This was first noticed in his Ernest Maltravers, and 
the sequel, Alice, or the Mysteries, which are marked by sen- 
timental passion and mystic ideas. In Night and Morning he 
is still mysterious : a blind fate seems to preside over his 
characters, robbing the good of its free merit and condoning 
the evil. 



452 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

In 1838 he was made a baronet. His versatile pen now 
turned to the drama; and although he produced nothing 
great, his Lady of Lyons, Richelieu, Money, and The Sea 
Captain have always since been favorites upon the stage, sub- 
sidizing the talents of actors like Macready, Kean, and Edwin 
Booth. 

We must now chronicle another change, from the mystic 
to the supernatural, as displayed in Zanoni and Liccretia, and 
especially in A Strange Story, which is the strangest of all. 
It was at the same period that he wrote The Last of the 
Barons, or the story of Warwick the king - maker, and 
Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings, Both are valuable to 
the student of English history as presenting the fruits of his 
own historic research. 

The last and most decided, and, we may add, most bene- 
ficial, change in Bulwer as a writer, was manifested in his pub- 
lication of the Caxtons, the chief merit of which is as an 
usher of the novels which were to follow. Pisistratus Caxton 
is the modern Tristram Shandy, and becomes the putative 
editor of the later novels. First of these is My Novel, or 
Varieties of English Life. It is an admirable work: it incul- 
cates a better morality, and a sense of Christian duty, at which 
Pelham would have laughed in scorn. Like it, but inferior 
to it, is What Will He do 7vith It? which has an interesting 
plot, an elevated style, and a rare human sympathy. 

Among other works, which we cannot mention, he wrote 
The New Ti?non, and King Arthur, in poetry, and a prose 
history entitled Athens, its Rise and Fall. 

Without the highest genius, but with uncommon scholar- 
ship and great versatility, Bulwer has used the materials of 
many kinds lying about him, to make marvellous mosaics, 
which imitate very closely the finest efforts of word-painting 
of the great geniuses of prose fiction. 

Charles Dickens. — Another remarkable development of 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 453 

the age was the use of prose fiction, instead of poetry, as the vehi- 
cle of satire in the cause of social reform. The world consents 
readily to be amused, and it likes to be amused at the expense 
of others ; but it soon tires of what is simply amusing or satiri- 
cal unless some noble purpose be disclosed. The novels of 
former periods had interested by the creation of character 
and scenes ; and there had been numerous satires prompted 
by personal pique. It is the glory of this latest age that it 
demands what shall so satirize the evil around it in men, in 
classes, in public institutions, that the evil shall recoil before 
the attack, and eventually disappear. Chief among such 
reformers are Dickens and Thackeray. 

Charles Dickens, the prince of modern novelists, was born 
at Landsport, Portsmouth, England, in 181 2. His father was 
at the time a clerk in the Pay Department of the Navy, but 
afterwards became a reporter of debates in Parliament. After 
a very hard early life and an only tolerable education, young 
Dickens made some progress in the study of law ; but soon 
undertook his father's business as reporter, in which he strug- 
gled as he has made David Copperfield to do in becoming 
proficient. 

His first systematic literary efforts were as a daily writer 
and reporter for The True Sun; he then contributed his 
sketches of life and character, drawn from personal observa- 
tion, to the Morning Chronicle : these were an earnest of his 
future powers. They were collected as Sketches by Boz, in 
two vohmies, and published in 1836. 

Pickwick. — In 1837 he was asked by a publisher to pre- 
pare a series of comic sketches of cockney sportsmen, to 
illustrate, as well as to be illustrated by, etchings by Seymour. 
This yoking of two geniuses was a trammel to both ; but the 
suicide of Seymour dissolved the connection, and Dickens 
had free play to produce the Pickwick Papers, by Boz, which 
were illustrated, as he proceeded, by H. K. Browne (Phiz). 



454 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

* 
The work met and has retained an unprecedented popularity. 

Caricature as it was, it caricatured real, existent oddities ; 
everything was probable ; the humor was sympathetic if 
farcical, the assertion of humanity bold, and the philosophy 
of universal application. He had touched our common 
nature in all ranks and conditions; he had exhibited men 
and women of all types ; he had exposed the tricks of poli- 
tics and the absurdity of elections ; the snobs of society were 
severely handled. He was the censor of law courts, the 
exposer of swindlers, the dread of cockneys, the friend of 
rustics and of the poor ; and he has displayed in the principal 
character, that of the immortal Pickwick, the power of a 
generous, simple-hearted, easily deceived, but always phil- 
anthropic man, who comes through all his trials without 
bating a jot of his love for humanity and his faith in human 
nature. But the master-work of his plastic hand was Sam 
Weller, whose wit and wisdom pervaded both hemispheres, 
and is as potent to excite laughter to-day as at the first. 

In this work he began that assault, not so much on shams 
as upon prominent, unblushing evil, which he carried on in 
some form or other in all his later works ; and which was to 
make him prominent among the reformers and benefactors 
of his age. He was at once famous, and his pen was in 
demand to amuse the idle and to aid the philanthropic. 

Nicholas Nickleby. — The Pichvick Papers were in their 
intention a series of sketches somewhat desultory and loosely 
connected. His next work was Nicholas Nickleby^ a com- 
plete story, in which he was entirely successful. Wonderful 
in the variety and reality of his characters, his powerful 
satire was here principally directed against the private 
boarding-schools in England, where unloved children, exiled 
and forgotten, were ill fed, scantily clothed, untaught, and 
beaten. Do-the-boys' Hall was his type, and many a school 
prison under that name was fearfully exposed and scourged. 



ft 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 455 

The people read with wonder and applause ; these haunts of 
cruelty were scrutinized, some of them were suppressed; and 
since Nicholas Nickleby appeared no such school can live, 
because Squeers and Smike are on every lip, and punishment 
awaits the tyrant. 

Our scope will not permit a review of his numerous novels. 
In Oliver Twist he denoimces the parish system in its care 
of orphans, and throws a Drummond light upon the haunts 
of crime in London. 

The Old Cu7'iosity Shop exposes the mania of gaming, and 
seems to have been a device for presenting the pathetic pic- 
tures of Little Nell and her grandfather, the wonderful and 
rapid learning of the marchioness, and the uncommon vitality 
of Mr. Richard Swiveller \ and also the compound of will 
and hideousness in Quilp. 

He affected to find in the receptacle of Master Humphrey's 
clock, his Bar7iaby Rudge, a very dramatic picture of the 
great riot incited by Lord George Gordon in 1780, which, 
in its gathering, its fury, and its easy dispersion, was not 
unlike that of Wat Tyler. Dickens's delineations are emi- 
nently historic, and present a better notion of the period 
than the general history itself. 

American Notes. — In 1841 Dickens visited America, 
where he was received by the public with great enthusiasm, 
and annoyed, as the author of his biography says, by many 
individuals. On his return to England, he produced his 
American Notes for General Circulation. They were sar- 
castic, superficial, and depreciatory, and astonished many 
whose hospitalities he had received. But, in 1843, ^^ V^' 
lished Martin CImzzlewit, in which American peculiarities are 
treated with the broadest caricature. The Notes might have 
been forgiven ; but the novel excited a great and just anger in 
America. His statements were not true '; his pictures were 
not just ; his prejudice led him to m.align a people who had 



45^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

received him with a foolish hospitality. He had eaten and 
drunk at the hands of the men whom he abused, and his 
character suffered more than that of his intended victims. 
In taking a few foibles for his caricature, he had left our 
merits untold, and had been guilty of the implication that 
we had none, although he knew that there were as elegant 
gentlemen, as refined ladies, and as cultivated society in 
America as the best in England. But a truce to reproaches ; 
he has been fully forgiven. 

His next novel was Dombey and Son, in which he attacks 
British pomp and pride of state in the haughty merchant. 
It is full of character and of pathos. Every one knows, as 
if they had appeared among us, the proud and rigid Dora- 
bey, J. B. the sly, the unhappy Floy, the exquisite Toots, 
the inimitable Nipper, Sol Gills the simple, and Captain 
Cuttle with his hook and his notes. 

This was followed by David Coppei'field, which is, to some 
extent, an autobiography describing the struggles of his youth, 
his experience in acquiring short-hand to become a reporter, 
and other vicissitudes of his own life. In it there is an attack 
upon the system of model prisons ; but the chief interest is 
found in his wonderful portraitures of varied and opposite 
characters : the Peggottys, Steerforth, the inimitable Micaw- 
ber, Betsy Trotwood ; Agnes, the lovely and lovable ; Mr. 
Dick, with such noble method in his madness; Dora, the 
child - wife ; the simple Traddles, and Uriah Heep, the 
'umble intriguer and villain. 

- Bleak House is a tremendous onslaught upon the Chancery 
system, and is said to have caused a modification of it; his 
knowledge of law gave him the power of an expert in detail- 
ing and dissecting its enormities. 

Little Dorrit presents the heartlessness of society, and is 
besides a full and fearful picture of the system of imprison- 
ment for debt. For variety, power, and pathos, it is one of 
his best efforts. 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 45/ 

A Tale of Two Cities is a gloomy but vivid story of the 
French Revolution, which has by no nieans the popularity of 
his other works. 

In Hard Times, a shorter story, he has shown the evil 
consequences of a hard, statistical, cramming education, in 
which the sympathies are repressed, and the mind made a 
practical machine. The failure of Gradgrind has warned 
many a parent from imitating him. 

Great Expectations failed to fulfil the promise of the name ; 
but Joe Gargery is as original a character as any he had 
drawn. 

His last completed story is Our Mutual Friend, which, al- 
though unequal to his best novels, has still original characters 
and striking scenes. The rage for rising in the social scale 
ruins the Veneerings, and Podsnappery is a well-chosen name 
for the heartless dogmatism which rules in English society. 

Besides these splendid works, we must mention the delight 
he has given, and the good he has done in expanding indivi- 
dual and public charity, by his exquisite Christmas stories, 
of which The Chimes, The Christmas Carol, and The Cricket 
on the Hearth are the best. 

His dramatic power has been fully illustrated by the ready 
adaptations of his novels to the stage; they are, indeed, in 
scenes, personages, costume, and interlocution, dramas in all 
except the form ; and he himself was an admirable actor. 

His Varied Powers. — His tenderness Is touching, and 
his pathos at once excites our sympathy. He does not tell us 
to feel or to weep, but he shows us scenes like those in the 
lite of Smike, and in the sufferings and death of Little Nell, 
which so simply appeal to the heart that we are for the time 
forgetful of the wand which conjures them before us. 

Dickens is bold in the advocacy of truth and in denouncing 
error ; he is the champion of honest poverty ; he is the foe 
of class pretension and oppression; he is the friend of 
39 



458 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

friendless children ; the reformer of those whom society has 
made vagrants. Without many clear assertions of Christian 
doctrine, but with no negation of it, he believes in doing 
good for its own sake, — in self-denial, in the rewards which 
virtue gives herself. His faults are few and venial. His 
merry life smacks too much of the practical joke and the 
punch-bowl ; he denounces cant in the self-appointed min- 
isters of the gospel, but he is not careful to draw contrasted 
pictures of good pastors. His opinion seems to be based 
upon a human perfectibility. But for rare pictures of real 
life he has never been surpassed ; and he has instructed an 
age, concerning itself, wisely, originally, and usefully. He 
has the simplicity of Goldsmith, and the truth to nature of 
Fielding and Smollett, without a spice of sentimgntalism or 
of impurity; he has brought the art of prose fiction to its 
highest point, and he has left no worthy successor. He 
lived for years separated from his wife on the ground of 
incompatibility, and, during his later years at Gadshill, twenty 
miles from London, to avoid the dissipations and draughts 
upon his time in that city. 

Second Visit to America. — In 1868 he again visited 
America, to read portions of his own works. He was well 
received by the public ; but society had learned its lesson on 
his former visit, and he was not overwhelmed with a hospi- 
tality he had so signally failed to appreciate. And if we had 
learned better, he had vastly improved ; the genius had 
become a gentleman. His readings were a great pecuniary 
success, and at their close he made an amend which was 
graceful a.nd proper; so that when he departed from our 
shores his former errors were fully condoned, and he left an 
admiring hemisphere behind him. 

In the glow of health, and while writing, in serial num- 
bers, a very promising novel entitled TAe Mystery of Edwin 
Drood, he was struck by apoplexy, in June, 1870, and in a 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 459 

few hours was dead. England has hardly experienced a 
greater loss. All classes of men mourned when he was 
buried in Westminster Abbey, in the poets' corner, among 
illustrious writers, — a prose - poet, none of whom has a 
larger fame than he ; a historian of his time of greater value 
to society than any who distinctively bear the title. His 
characters are drawn from life ; his own experience is found 
in Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield ; Micawber is a 
caricature of his own father. Traddles is said to represent 
his friend Talfourd. Skimpole is supposed to be an original 
likeness of Leigh Hunt, and William and Daniel Grant, of 
Manchester, were the originals of the Brothers Cheeryble. 

William Makepeace Thackeray. — Dickens gives us 
real characters in the garb of fiction ; but Thackeray uses fic- 
tion as the vehicle of social philosophy. Great name, second 
only to Dickens ; he is not a story-teller, but an eastern Cadi 
administering justice in the form of apologue. Dickens is 
eminently dramatic ; Thackeray has nothing dramatic, neither 
scene nor personage. He is Dcmocritus the laughing phil- 
osopher, or Jupiter the thunderer ; he arraigns vice, pats 
virtue on the shoulder, shouts for muscular Christianity, 
uncovers shams, — his personages are only names. Dickens 
describes individuals ; Thackeray only classes : his men and 
women are representatives, and, with but few exceptions, 
they excite our sense of justice, but not our sympathy; the 
principal exception is Colonel Newcome^ a real individual 
creation upon whom Thackeray exhausted his genius, and he 
stands alone. 

Thackeray was born in Calcutta, of an old Yorkshire 
family, in 181 1. His father was in the civil service, and he 
was sent home, when a child of seven, for his education at 
the Charter House in London. Thence he was entered at 
Cambridge, but left without being graduated. An easy 
fortune of ^^{^20,000 led him to take life easily; he studied 



460 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

painting with somewhat of the desultory devotion he has 
ascribed to Clive Newcome, and, like that worthy, travelled 
on the Continent. Partly by unsuccessful investments, and 
partly by careless living, his means were spent, and he took 
up writing as a profession. The comic was his forte, and 
his early pieces, written under the pseudonym of Michael 
Angelo Fitzmarsh and George Fitz Boodle, are broadly hu- 
morous, but by no means in his later finished style. The 
Great Hoggarty Diamo7id (1841) did not disclose his full 
powers. 

In 1 841, Punch, a weekly comic illustrated sheet, was 
begun, and it opened to Thackeray a field which exactly 
suited him. Short scraps of comedy, slightly connected 
sketches, and the weekly tale of brick, chimed with his humor, 
and made him at once a favorite. The best of these serial 
contributions were The Snob Papers : they are as fine speci- 
mens of humorous satire as exist in the language. But 
these would not have made him famous, as they did not dis- 
close his power as a novelist. 

Vanity Fair. — This was done by his Vanity Fair, which 
was published, in monthly numbers, between 1846 and 1848. 
It was at once popular, and is the most artistic of all 
his works. He called it a novel without a hero, and he is 
right ; the mind repudiates all aspirants for the post, and 
settles upon poor Major Sugar-Plums as the best man in it. 
He could not have said without a heroine, for does not the 
world since ring with the fame of Becky Sharpe, the cleverest 
and wickedest little woman in England? The virtuous reader 
even is sorry that Becky must come to grief, as, with a propei 
respect to morality, the novelist makes her. 

Never had the Vanity Fair of European society received so 
scathing a dissection ; and its author was immediately recog- 
nized as one of the greatest living satirists and novelists. If 
he adheres more to the old school of Fielding, who was his 



1, 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 461 

model, in his plots and handling of the story, he was evi- 
dently original in his satire. 

In 1847, upon the completion of this work, he began his 
History of Pe^idennis, in serial numbers, in which he presents 
the hero, Arthur Pendennis, as an average youth of the day, 
full of faults and foibles, but likewise generous and repentant. 
Here he enlists the sym.pathies which one never feels for 
perfection ; and here, too, he portrays female loveliness and 
endurance in his Mrs. Pendennis and Laura. Arthur is a 
purer Tom Jones and Laura a superior Sophia Western. 

In 185 1 he gave a course of lectures, repeated in America 
the next year, on " the English Humorists of the Eighteenth 
Century." There was no one better fitted to write such a 
course ; he felt with them and was of them. But if this 
enabled him to present them sympathetically, it also caused 
him to overrate them, and in some cases to descend to the 
standpoint of their own partial views. He is wrong in his 
estimate of Swift, and too eulogistic of Addison \ but he is 
thoroughly English in both. 

Henry Esmond. — The study of history necessary to pre- 
pare these led to his undertaking a novel on the time of 
Queen Anne, entitled The Histojj of Henry Esmond^ Esq., 
written by himself. His appreciation of the age is excellent ; 
but the book, leaving for the most part the comic field in 
which he was most at home, is drier and less read than his 
others ; as an historical presentation a great success, with rare 
touches of pathos ; as a work of fiction not equal to his 
other stories. The comic muse assumes a tragic, or at least 
a very sombre, dress. We have a portraiture of Queen Anne 
in her last days, and a sad picture of him who, to the Pro- 
testant succession, was the pretender, and to the hopeful 
Jacobites, James III. The character of Marlborough is given 
with but little of what was really meritorious in that great 
captain. 
'39* 



462 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

His novel of Pendennis gave him, after the manner 
of Bulwer's Caxton^ an editor in Arthicr Pendennis, who 
presents us The Newcomes, Memoirs of a Most Respectable 
Family, which he published in a serial form, completing it 
in 1855. 

The Newcomes. — In that work we have the richest cul- 
ture, the finest satire, and the rarest social philosophy. The 
character — the hero by pre-eminence — is Colonel Newcome, 
a nobleman of nature's creation, generous, simple, a yearn- 
ingly affectionate father, a friend to all the poor and afflicted, 
one of the best men ever delineated by a novelist ; few hearts 
are so hard as not to be touched by the story of his death 
in his final retirement -at the Charter House. When, sur- 
rounded by weeping friends, he heard the bell, "a peculiar 
sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a 
little, and quickly said ' Adsum,' and fell back: it was the 
word we used at school when names were called ; and, lo ! 
he, whose heart was that of a little child, had answered to his 
name, and stood in the presence of the Master." 

The Georges. — While he was writing The Newcomes, he 
had prepared a course of four lectures on the Four Georges, 
kings of England, with which he made his second visit to 
the United States, and which he delivered in the principal 
cities, to make a fund for his daughters and for his old age. 
It was entirely successful, and he afterwards read them in 
England and Scotland. They are very valuable historically, 
as they give us the truth with regard to men whose reigns 
were brilliant and on the whole prosperous, but who them- 
selves, with the exception of the third of the name, were as 
bad men as ever wore crowns. George III. was continent 
and honest, but a maniac, and Mr. Thackeray has treated 
liim with due forbearance and eulogy. 

In 1857, Mr. Thackeray was a candidate for Parliament 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 463 

from Oxford, but was defeated by a small majority; his con- 
duct in the election was so magnanimous, that his defeat may 
be regarded as an advantage to his reputation. 

In the same year he began The Virginians, which may be 
considered his failure ; it is historically a continuation of 
Esmond, — some of the English characters, the Esmonds in 
Virginia, being the same as in that work. But his presenta- 
tion and estimate of Washington are a caricature, and his 
sketch of General James Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, is tame 
and untrue to life. His descriptions of Virginia colonial 
life are unlike the reality ; but where he is on his own ground, 
describing English scenes and customs in that day, he is more 
successful. To paint historical characters is beyond the power 
of his pencil, and his Doctor Johnson is not the man whom 
Boswell has so successfully presented. 

In i860 he originated the Cornhi II Magazine, to which his 
name gave unusual popularity : it attained a circulation of 
one hundred thousand — unprecedented in England. In 
that he published Lovel the Widower, which was not much 
liked, and a charming reproduction of the Newcomes, — for it 
is nothing more, — entitled The Adventures of Philip on His 
Way through the World. Philip is a more than average Eng- 
lishman, with a wicked father and rather a stupid wife ; but 
*' the little sister" is a star — there is no finer character in 
any of his works. Philip, in spite of its likeness to The 
Newcomes, is a delightful book. 

With an achieved fame, a high position, a home which he 
had just built at Kensington, a large incomiC, he seemed to 
have before him as prosperous an old age as any one could 
desire, when, such are the mysteries of Providence, he was 
found dead in his room on the morning of December 24, 
1863. 

Estimate of His Powers. — Thackeray's excellences are 
manifest : he was the master of idiomatic English, a great 



464 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

moralist and reformer, and the king of satire, all the weap- 
ons of which he managed with perfect skill. He had a rapier 
for aristocratic immunities of evil, arrows to transfix pre- 
scriptions and shams ; and with snobs (we must change the 
figure) he played as a cat does with a mouse, torturing and 
then devouring. In the words of Miss Bronte, ^' he was the 
first social regenerator of the day, the very master of that 
working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped 
system of things." But this was his chief and glorious 
strength : in the truest sense, he was a satirist and a humorist, 
but not a novelist; he could not create character. His dram- 
atic persons do not speak for themselves ; he tells us what 
they are and do. His mission seems to have been to arraign 
and demolish evil rather than to applaud good, and thus he 
enlists our sinless anger as crusaders rather than our sympathy 
as philanthropists. In Dickens we are sometimes disposed 
to skip a little, in our ardor, to follow the plot and find the 
denouement. In Thackeray we read every word, for it is the 
philosophy we want ; the plot and personages are secondary, 
as indeed he considered them ; for he often tells us, in the 
time of greatest depression of his hero, that it will all come 
out right at the end, — that Philip will marry Charlotte, and 
have a good income, while the poor soul is wrestling with the 
res aiigusta domi. Dickens and Thackeray seemed to draw 
from each other in their later works ; the former philosophiz- 
ing more in his Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend, and 
the latter attempting more of the descriptive in The Newcomes 
and Fhilip. Of minor pieces we may mention his Rebecca 
and Rowena, and his Kickleburys on the Rhine ; his Essay on 
Thunder 2M^ Small Beer; his Notes o ft a Journey from Corn- 
hill to Grand Cairo, in 1846, and his published collection 
of smaller sketches called The Roundabout Papers. That 
Thackeray was fully conscious of the dignity of his func- 
tions may be gathered from his own words in Henry Esmond. 
*'I would have history familiar rather than heroic, and think 



I 



LATER NOVELISTS AS SOCIAL REFORMERS. 465 

Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding [and, we may add, Mr. 
Thackeray,] will give our children a much better idea of the 
manners of that age in England than the Court Gazette and 
the newspapers which we get thence." At his death he left 
an unfinished novel, entitled DeJinis Duval. A gifted 
daughter, who was his kind amanuensis, Miss Anne E. 
Thacker^vy, has written several interesting tales, among 
which are The Village oti the Cliff and The Story of Eliza- 
beth, 

2E 



CHAPTER XLI. 



THE LATER WRITERS. 



Charles Lamb. I Thomas de Quincey. i Writers on Science and 

Thomas Hood. ' Other NoveUsts. | Philosophy. 

Charles Lamb. — This distinguished writer, although not 
a novelist like Dickens and Thackeray, in the sense of having 
produced extensive works of fiction, was, like them, a hu- 
morist and a satirist, and has left miscellaneous works of rare 
merit. He was born in London, and was the son of a servant 
to one of the Benches of the Inner Temple ; he was educated 
at Christ's Hospital, where he became the warm friend of 
Coleridge. In 1792 he received an appointment as clerk 
in the South Sea House, which he retained until 1825, when, 
owing to the distinction he had obtained in the world of 
letters, he was permitted to retire with a pension of ;!^45o. 
He describes his feelings on this happy release from busi- 
ness, in his essay on The Superanjiuated Ma7i. He was an 
eccentric man, a serio-comic character, whose sad life is sin- 
gularly contrasted with his irrepressible humor. His sister, 
whom he has so tenderly described as Bridget Elia, in a fit of 
insanity killed their mother with a carving-knife, and Lamb 
devoted himself to her care. 

He was a poet, and left quaint and beautiful album verses 
and minor pieces. As a dramatist, he is known by his 

tragedy y"6'/z;z Woodvil, and the farce Mr. H , neither of 

which was a success. But he has given us in his Specimens o-^ 
Old English Dramatists the result of great reading and rare 
criticism. 

466 



THE LATER WRITERS. 46/ 

But it is chiefly as a writer of essays and short stories that 
he is distinguished. The Essays of Elia, in their vein, mark 
an era in the literature ; they are light, racy, seemingly dashed 
off, but really full of his reading of the older English authors. 
Indeed, he is so quaint in thought and style, that he seems 
an anachronism — a writer of the Elizabethan period returned 
to life in this century. He bubbles over with puns, jests, and 
repartees; and although not popular in the sense of reaching 
the multitude, he is the friend and companion of congenial 
readers. Among his essays, we may mention the stories of 
Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret. Dream Children 
and The Child Angel are those of greatest power ; but every 
one he has written is charming. His sly hits at existing abuses 
are designed to laugh them away. He was the favorite of his 
literary circle, and as a talker had no superior. After a life 
of care, not unmingled with pleasures, he died in 1834. 
Lamb's letters are racy, witty, idiomatic, and unlabored ; 
and, as most of them are to colleagues in literature and on 
subjects of social and literary interest, they are important aids 
in studying the history of his period. 

Thomas Hood. — The greatest humorist, the best punster, 
and the ablest satirist of his age. Hood attacked the social 
evils around him with such skill and power that he stands 
forth as a philanthropist. He was born in London in 1798, 
and, after a limited education, he began to learn the art of 
engraving ; but his pen was more powerful than his burin. 
He soon began to contribute to the London Magazine his 
Whims and Oddities ; and, in irregular verse, satirized the 
would-be great men of the time, and the eccentric legislation 
they proposed in Parliament. These short poems are full of 
puns and happy jeux de mots, and had a decided effect in 
frustrating the foolish plans. After this he published iV'"^//^;z<2/ 
Tales, in the same comic vein ; but also produced his exquisite 
serious pieces, The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, Hero 



468 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and Leander, and others, all of which are striking and taste- 
ful. In 1838 he commenced The Comic Annual, which ap- 
peared for several years, brimful of mirth and fun. He was 
editor of various magazines, — The New Mo7iihly, and Hood' s 
Magazine. For Punch he wrote The Song of the Shirt, and 
The Bridge of Sighs. No one can compute the good done 
by both \ the hearts touched ; the pockets opened. The 
sewing women were better paid, more cared for, elevated in 
the social scale ; and many of them saved from that fate 
which is so touchingly chronicled in The Bridge of Sighs. 
Hood was a true poet and a great poet. Miss Kilmansegg 
and her Precious Leg is satire, story, epic, comedy, in one. 

If he owed to Smollett's Humphrey Clinker the form of 
his Up the Rhine, he has equalled Smollett in the narrative, in 
the variety of character, and in the admirable cacography of 
Martha Penny. His caricatures fasten facts in the memory, 
and every tourist up the Rhine recognizes Hood's personages 
wherever he lands. 

After a life of ill-health and pecuniary struggle. Hood 
died, greatly lamented, on the 3d of May, 1845, ^^^ left no 
successor to wield his subtle pen. 

Thomas de Quincey (i 785-1 859). — This singular author, 
and very learned and original thinker, owes much of his reputa- 
tion to the evil habit of opium-eating, which affected his per- 
sonal life and authorship. His most popular work is The Con- 
fessions of an English Opium- Eater, which interests the reader 
by its curious pictures of the abnormal conditions in which he 
lived and wrote. He abandoned this noxious practice in the 
year 1820. He produced much which he did not publish; and 
his writings all contain a suggestion of strength and scholar- 
ship, a surplus beyond what he has given to the world. There 
are numerous essays and narratives, among which his paper en- 
titled Murder considered as One of the Fine Arts is especially 
notable. His prose is considered a model of good English. 



THE LATER WRITERS. 469 

The death of Dickens and Thackeray left England v/ithout 
a novelist of equal fame and power, but with a host of schol- 
arly and respectable pens, whose productions delight the 
popular taste, and who are still in the tide of busy authorship. 

Our purpose is already accomplished, and we might rest 
without the proceeding beyond the middle of the century; 
but it will be proper to make brief mention of those, some of 
whom have already departed, but many of whom still re- 
main, and are producing new works, who best illustrate the 
historical value and teachings of English literature, and whose 
writmgswill be read in the future for their delineations of the 
habits and conditions of the present period. 

Other Novelists. 

Captain Frederick Marry at, of the Royal Navy, 1 792-1 848: in his sea 
novels depicts naval life with rare fidelity, and with a roystering jovi- 
ality which makes them extremely entertaining. The principal of 
these are Fratik Mildmay, N'ewton Forster, Peter Simple, and Midship- 
man Easy. His works constitute a truthful portrait of the British 
Navy in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and have influenced 
many high-spirited youths to choose a maritime profession. 

George P. R. James, 1806-1860: is the author of nearly two hundred 
novels, chiefly historical, which have been, in their day, popular. It 
was soon found, however, that he repeated himself, and the sameness 
of handling began to tire his readers. His "tjvo travellers," with whom 
he opens his stories, have become proverbially ridiculous. But he 
has depicted scenes in modern history with skill, nnd especially in 
French history. His Richelieu is a favorite; and in his Life of 
Charlemagne he has brought together the principal events in the career 
of that distinguished monarch with logical force and historical ac- 
curacy. 

Benjamin d^ Israeli, born 1805 : is far more famous as a persevering, 
acute, and able statesman than as a novelist. In proof of this, having 
surmounted unusual difficulties, he has been twice Chancellor of the 
Exchequer and once Prime Minister of England. Among his earlier 
novels, which are pictures of existing society, are : Vivian Gray, 
Contarini Fleming, Coningsby, and Henrietta Temple. In The Wo7i- 
drous^ Tale of Alroy he has described the career of that singular claira- 
40 



470 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

ant to the Jewish Messiahship. Lothair, which was published in 1869, 
is the story of a young nobleman who was almost enticed to enter the 
Roman Catholic Church. The descriptions of society are either very 
much overwrought or ironical ; but his knowledge of State craft and 
Church craft renders the book of great value to the history of religious 
polemics. His father, Isaac d^ Israeli, is favorably known as the author 
of The Curiosities of Lite^-ature, The Amenities of Literature, and The 
Quarrels of Authors. 

Charles Lever, 1806-1872: he was born in Dublin, and, after a partial 
University career, studied medicine. He has embodied his experience 
of military life in several striking but exaggerated works, — among 
these are: The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Charles O^Malley, and 
yack Ilinton. He excels in humor and in picturesque battle-scenes, 
and he has painted the age in caricature. Of its kind, Charles C Malley 
stands pre-eminent: the variety of character is great; all classes of 
military men figure in the scenes, from the Duke of Wellington to the 
inimitable Mickey Free. He was for some time editor of the Dublin 
University Afagazine, and has written numerous other novels, among 
which are : Roland Cashel, The Knight of Gwynne, and The Dodd 
Family Abroad ; and, last of all. Lord Kilgobbin. 

Charles Kingsley, born 1 809: this accomplished clergyman, who is a 
canon of Chester, is among the most popular English writers, — a poet, 
a novelist, and a philosopher. He was first favorably known by a 
poetical drama on the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, entitled The 
Sainfs Tragedy. Among his other works are: Alton Locke, Tailor 
and Poet ; Hypatia, the Story of a Virgin Martyr ; Andromeda ; West- 
ward Ho I or the Adventures of Sir A my as Leigh; Two Years Ago; 
and Hereward, the Last of the English. This last is a very vivid 
historical picture of the way in which the man of the fens, under the 
lead of this powerful outlaw, held out against William the Conqueror. 
The busy pen of Kingsley has produced numerous lectures, poems, 
reviews, essays, and some plain and useful sermons. Pie is now Pro- 
fessor of Modern History at Cambridge. 

Charlotte Bronte, 1816— 1855 : if of an earlier period, this gifted woman 
would demand a far fuller mention and a more critical notice than 
can be with justice given of a contemporary. She certainly wrote 
from the depths of her own consciousness. Jane Eyre, her first great 
work, was received with intense interest, and was variously criticized. 
The daughter of a poor clergyman at Haworth, and afterwards a 
teacher in a school at Brussels, with little knowledge of the world, she 
produced a powerful book containing much curious philosophy, and 



THE LATER WRITERS. 4/1 

took rank at once among the first novelists of the age. Her other 
works, if not equal to yane Eyre, are still of great merit, and deal pro- 
foundly with the springs of human action. They are : The Professor^ 
Villette, and Shirley. Her characters are portraits of the men and women 
around her, painted from life; and she speaks boldly of motives and 
customs which other novelists have touched very delicately. She had 
two gifted sisters, who were also successful novelists ; biit who died 
young. Miss Bronte died a short time after her marriage to Mr. Nichol, 
her father's curate. Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, her near friend, and the 
author of a successful novel called Mary Barton, has written an 
interesting biography of ISIrs. Nichol. 
George Eliot, bom 1820 : under this pseudonym. Miss Evans has writ- 
ten several works of great interest. Among these are: Adam Bede ; 
The Mill on the Floss ; Bomola, an Italian story ; Felix Holt; and Silas 
Marner. Simple, and yet eminently dramatic in scene, character, and 
interlocution, George Eliot has painted pictures from middle and com- 
mon life, and is thus the exponent of a large humanity. She is now 
the wife of the popular author, G. H. Lewes. 
Dinah Maria Aluloch (Mrs. Craik), born 1826 : a versatile writer. She is 

best known by her novels entitled John Halifax and The Ogilvies. 
Wilkie Collins, boi'n 1824: he is the son of a landscape-painter, and 
is renowned for his curious and well-concealed plots, phantom-like 
characters, and striking effects. Among his novels the best known are : 
Antonitta, The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, N'o Name, Arma- 
dale, The Moonstone, and Man and Wife. There is a sameness in 
these works; and yet it is evident that the author has put his invention 
on the rack to create new intrigues, and to mystify his reader from the 
beginning to the end of each story. 
Charles Reade, born 1814: he is one of the most prolific writers of the 
day, as well as one of the most readable in all that he has written. 
He draws many impassioned scenes, and is as sensuous in literature as 
Rubens in art Among his principal works are : White Lies, Love Ale 
Little, Love Me Long ; The Cloister a^id The Hearth ; Hard Cash, and 
Griffith Gaunt, which convey little, if any, practical instruction. His 
Never Too Late to Alend is of great value in displaying the abuses of 
the prison system in England ; and his Put Yourself in His Place is a 
very powerful attack upon the Trades' Unions. A singular epigram- 
matic style keeps up the interest apart from the story. 
Mary Russell Mitford, 1786-1855 : she was a poet and a dramatist, 
but is chiefly known by her stories. In the collection called Ot^r Vil- 



472 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

lage, she has presented beautiful and simple pictures of English country 
life which are at once touching and instructive. 

Charlotte Mary Yonge, born 1823: among the many interesting works 
of this author, The Heir of Redclyff is the first and best. This was 
followed by Daisy Chain, Heartsease, The Clever Wo?nan of the 
Family, and numerous other works of romance and of history, — all 
of which are valuable for their high tone of moral instruction and 
social manners. 

Anthony Trollope, bom 181 5: he and his brother, Thomas Adolphus 
Trollope, are sons of that Mrs. Frances Trollope who abused our 
country in her work entitled The Do^nestic Alanners of the Americans, 
in terms that were distasteful even to English critics. Anthony Trol- 
lope is a successful writer of society-novels, which, without being of 
the highest order, are faithful in their portraitures. Among those which 
have been very popular are : Barchester Towers, Fra7nley Parsojiage, 
Doctor Thome, and Orley Farm, He travelled in the United States, 
and has published a work of discernment entitled No7'th America., 
His brother Thomas is best known by his History of Florence to the 
Fall of the Republic. 

Thomas Hughes, born 1823 : the popular author of To77i Brown's School- 
Days at Rugby, and To7n Brow7t at Oxford, — books which display the 
workings of these institutions, and set up a standard for English youth. 
The first is the best, and has made him famous. 

Writers on Science and Philosophy. 

Although these do not come strictly within the scope of English literature, 
they are so connected with it in the composition of general culture, and 
give such a complexion to the age, that it is well to mention the prin- 
cipal names. 

Sir Willia7n Hamilton, 1 788- 1 856: for twenty years Professor of Logic 
and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. His voluminous 
lectures on both these subjects were edited, after his death, by Mansel and 
Veitch, and have been since of the highest authority. 

Willia77i Whewell, 1 795-1866: for some time Master of Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge. He has written learnedly on many subjects: his 
most valuable works are : A History of the Inductive Sciences, The 
Ele7ne}tts of Morality, and The Pha^ality of Wo7'lds. Of Whewell it 
has been pithily said, that "science was his forte, and omniscience his 
foible." 

Richard Whafely, D.D.,\1%1-\'^^i: he was appointed in 1831 Arch- 



THE LATER WRITERS. 473 

bishop of Dublin and Kildare, in Ireland. His chief works are : Ele- 
ments of Logic, Elements of Rhetoric, and Lectures on Political Economy. 
He gave a new impetus to the study of Logic and Rhetoric, and pre- 
sented the formal logic of Aristotle anew to the world ; thus marking 
a distinct epoch in the history of that much controverted science. 

John Ruskin, born 1819 : he ranks among the most original critics in 
art ; but is eccentric in his opinions. His powers were first displayed 
in his Modern Painters. In his Seven L^ai7ips of Architecture he has 
laid down the great fundamental principles of that art, among the forms 
of which the Gothic claims the pre-eminence. These are further car- 
ried, out in The Stones-of Venice. He is a transcendentalist and a pre- 
Raphaelite, and exceedingly dogmatic in stating his views. His de- 
scriptive powers are very great. 

Hugh Miller, 1 802-1 856 : an uneducated mechanic, he was a brilliant 
genius and an observant philosopher. His best works are : The Old 
Red Sandstone, Footprints of the Creator, and The Testi?nonies of the 
Rocks. He shot himself in a fit of insanity. 

John Stuart Mill, born 1806: the son of James Mill, the historian of 
India. He was carefully educated, and has written on many subjects. 
He is best known by his System of Logic; his work on Political Econ- 
omy ; and his Treatise on Liberty. Each of these topics being questions 
of controversy, Mr. Mill states his views strongly in respect to opposing 
systems, and is very clear in the expression of his own dogmas. 

Thomas Chalmers, D. D., 1780-1847: this distinguished divine won his 
greatest reputation as an eloquent preacher. He was for some time Pro- 
fessor of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrew's, and wrote 
on Natural Theology, The Evidences of Christianity, and some lectures 
on Astronomy. But all his works are glowing sermons rather than 
philosophical treatises. 

Richard Chevenix Trench, D. D., born 1807: the present Archbishop of 
Dublin. He has written numerous theological works of popular value, 
among which are Notes on the Parables, and on Miracles. He has also 
published two series of charming lectures on English philology, entitled 
The Study of Words and English Past and Present. They are sug- 
gestive and discursive rather than philosophical, but have incited many 
persons to pursue this delightful study. 

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., born 1815 : Dean of Westminster. He 

was first known by his excellent biogi-aphy of Dr. Arnold of Rugby; 

but has since enriched biblical literature by his lectures on The Eastern 

Church and on The Jewish Church. He accompanied ihe Prince of 

40* 



474 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

"Wales on his visit to Palestine, and was not only eager in collecting 
statistics, but has reproduced them with poetic power. 

Nicholas Wiseman, D.D., 1802-1865: the head of the Roman Catholic 
Church in England. Cardinal Wiseman has written much on theologi- 
cal and ecclesiastical questions ; but he is best known to the literary 
world by his able lectures on The Connection between Science and Re- 
vealed Religion, which are additionally valuable because they have no 
sectarian character.' 

Charles Dai'win, born 1809 : although he began his career at an early 
age, his principal works are so immediately of the present time, and 
his speculations are so involved in serious controversies, that they are 
not within the scope of this work. His principal works are : The Origin 
of Species by 7neans of N'atural Selection, and The Descent of Alan. His 
facts are curious and very carefully selected; but his conclusions have 
been severely criticized. 

Frederick Max Midler, born 1823 : a German by birth. He is a profes- 
sional Oxford, and has done more to popularize the Science of Language 
than any other writer. He has written largely on Oriental linguistics, 
and has given two courses of lectures on The Science of Langnage, 
which have been published, and are used as text-books. His Chips from 
a German Workshop is a charming book, containing his miscellaneous 
articles in reviews and magazines. 



Roman News Letters. 
The Gazette. 
The Civil War. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 



Later Divisions. [ The Dailies. 

The Reviews. 1 The London Times. 

The Monthlies. ' [ Other Newspapers. 






Roman News Letters. — English serials and periodicals, 
from the very time of their origin, display, in a remarkable 
manner, the progress both of English literature and of Eng- 
lish history, and form the most striking illustration that the 
literature interprets the history. In using the caption, "jour- 
nalism," we include all forms of periodical literature — reviews, 
magazines, weekly and daily papers. The word journalism 
is, in respect to many of them, a misnomer, etymologically 
considered : it is a French corruption of diurnal, which, from 
the Latin dies, should mean a daily paper ; but it is now 
generally used to include all periodicals. The origin of 
newspapers is quite curious, and antedates the invention of 
printing. The acta -diurna, or journals of public events, 
were the daily manuscript reports of the Roman Government 
during the later commonwealth. In these, among other mat- 
ters of public interest, every birth, marriage, and divorce was 
entered. As an illustration of the character of these brief 
entries, we have the satire of Petronius, which he puts in the 
mouth of the freedman Trimalchio : "The seventh of the 
Kalends of Sextilis, on the estate at Cumse, were born thirty 
boys, twenty girls ; were carried from the floor to the barn, 
500,000 bushels of wheat; were broke 500 oxen. The same 
day the slave Mithridates was crucified for blasphemy against 
the Emperor's genius; the same day was placed in the chest 

475 



47^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the sum of ten millions sesterces, which could not be put out 
to use." Similar in character were theA^fa Urdana, or city 
register, the Ac^a Fublica, and the Acta Senafiis, whose 
names indicate their contents. They were brief, almost tabu- 
lar, and not infrequently sensational. 

The Gazette. — After the downfall of Rome, and during 
the Dark Ages, there are few traces of journalism. When 
Venice was still in her palmy days, in 1563, during a war 
with the Turks, printed bulletins were issued from time to 
time, the price for reading which was a coin of about three 
farthings' value called d. gazetta ; and so the paper soon came 
to be called a gazette. Old files, to the amount of thirty 
volumes, of great historical value, may be found in the Mag- 
liabecchian Library at Florence. 

Next in order, we find in France Affiches, or placards, 
which were soon succeeded by regular sheets of advertise- 
ment, exhibited at certain offices. 

As early as the time of the intended invasion of England 
by the Spanish Armada, about the year 1588, we find an 
account of its defeat and dispersion in the Mercurie, issued by 
Queen Elizabeth's own printer. In another number is the 
news of a plot for killing the queen, and a statement that 
instruments of torture were on board the vessels, to set up the 
Inquisition in London. Whether true or not, the newspaper 
said it; and the English people believed it implicitly. 

About 1600, with the awakening spirit of the people, there 
began to appear periodical papers containing specifically 
news from Germany, from Italy, &c. And during the Thirty 
Years' War there was issued a weekly paper called The Cer- 
tain News of the Present Week. Although the word news is 
significant enough, many persons considered it as made up of 
the initial letters representing the cardinal points of the 
compass, N.E. W.S., from which the curious people looked 
for satisfying intelligence. 



ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 47/ 

The Civil War. — The progress of English journalism 
received a great additional impetus when the civil war broke 
out between Charles I. and his Parliament, in 1642. To meet 
the demands of both parties for intelligence, numbers of 
small sheets were issued : Truths from York told of the rising 
in the king's favor there. There were : Tidings from Ire- 
land, News from Mull, telling of the siege of that place in 
1643; The Dutch Spy; The Parliament Kite ; The Secret 
Owl ; The Scof s Dove, with the olive-branch. Then flour- 
ished the Weekly Discoverer, and The Weekly Discoverer 
Stripped Naked. But these were only bare and partial state- 
ments, which excited rancor without conveying intelligence. 
*' Had there been better vehicles for the expression of public 
opinion," says the author of the Student's history of Eng- 
land, ''the Stuarts might have been saved from some of 
those schemes which proved so fatal to themselves." 

In the session of Parliament held in 1695, there occurred 
a revolution of great moment. There had been an act^ en- 
forced for a limited time, to restrain unlicensed printing, 
and under it censors had been appointed ; but, in this year, 
the Parliament refused to re-enact or continue it, and thus the 
press found itself comparatively free. 

We have already referred to the powerful influence of the 
essayists in The Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, and Rambler, 
which may be called the real origin of the present English 
press. 

Later Divisions. — Coming down to the close of the 
eighteenth century, we find the following division of Eng- 
lish periodical literature: Quarterlies, usually called Reviews ; 
Monthlies, generally entitled Magazines ; Weeklies, contain- 
ing digests of news ; and Dailies, in which are found the 
intelligence and facts of the present moment ; and in this 
order, too, were the intellectual strength and learning of the 
time at first employed. The Quarterlies contained the articles 



4/8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

of the great men — the acknowledged critics in politics, liter- 
ature, and art ; the Magazines, a current literature of poetry 
and fiction ; the Weeklies and Dailies, reporters' facts and 
statistics ; the latter requiring activity rather than cleverness, 
and beginning to be a vehicle for extensive advertisements. 

This general division has been since maintained ; but if 
the order has not been reversed, there can be no doubt that 
the great dailies have steadily risen ; on most questions of 
popular interest in all departments, long and carefully written 
articles in the dailies, from distinguished pens, anticipate 
the quarterlies, or force them to seek new grounds and forms 
of presentation after forestalling their critical opinions. Not 
many years ago, the quarterlies subsidized the best talent ; 
now the men of that class write for The Times, Standard, 
Telegraph, &c. 

Let us look, in the order we have mentioned, at some 
representatives of the press in its various forms. 

Each of the principal reviews represents a political party, 
and at the same time, in most cases, a religious denomination ; 
and they owe much of their interest to the controversial spirit 
thus engendered. 

Reviews. — First among these, in point of origin, is the 
Edinburgh Review, which was produced by the joint efforts 
of several young, and comparatively unknown, gentlemen, 
among whom were Francis (afterwards) Lord Jeffrey, Lord 
Murray, Mr. (since Lord) Brougham, and the Rev. Sydney 
Smith. The latter gentleman was appointed first editor, and 
remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number. 
Thereafter Jeffrey conducted it. The men were clever, witty, 
studious, fearless ; and the Review was not only from the first 
a success, but its fiat was looked for by authors with fear and 
trembling. It became a vehicle for the efforts of the best 
minds. Macaulay wrote for it those brilliant miscellanies 
which at once established his fame, and gave it much of its 



ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 479 

popularity. In it Jeffrey attacked the Lake poetry, and in- 
curred the hatred of Byron. Its establishment, in 1803, was 
an era in the world of English letters. The papers were not 
merely reviews, but monographs on interesting subjects — a 
new anatomy of history; it was in a general way an exponent, 
but quite an independent one, of the Whig party, or those 
who would liberally construe the Constitution, — putting 
Churchmen and Dissenters on the same platform ; although 
published in Edinburgh, it was neither Scotch nor Presbyterian. 
It attacked ancient prescriptions and customs ; agitated questions 
long considered settled both of present custom and former 
history ; and thus imitated the champion knights who chal- 
lenged all comers, and sustained no defeats. 

Occupying opposite ground to this is the great English 
review called the London Quarterly : it was established in 
1809 ; is an uncompromising Tory, — entirely conservative as 
to monarchy, aristocracy, and Established Church. Its first 
editor was William Gifford ; but it attained its best celebrity 
under the charge of John Gibson Lockhart, the son-in-law of 
Sir Walter Scott, a man of singular critical power. Among 
its distinguished contributors were Southey, Scott, Canning, 
Croker, and Wordsworth. 

The North British Review, which never attained the celeb- 
rity of either of these, and which has at length, in 187 1, 
been discontinued, occupied strong Scottish and Presbyterian 
ground, and had its respectable supporters. 

But besides the parties mentioned, there is a floating one, 
growing by slow but sure accretion, know as the Radical. It 
includes men of many stamps, mainly utilitarian, — radical in 
politics, innovators, radical in religion, destructive as to sys- 
tems of science and arts, a learned and inquisitive class, — ra- 
tional, transcendental, and intensely dogmatic. As a vent for 
this varied party, the Westminster Review was founded by 
Mr. Bentham, in 1824. Its articles are always well written, 
and s.ometimes dangerous, according to our orthodox no- 



480 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

tions. It is supported by such writers as Mill, Bowring, and 
Buckle. 

Besides these there are numerous quarterlies of more or less 
limited scope, as in science or art, theology or law; such as 
The Eclectic y The Christian Observer ^ The Dublin, and many 
others. 

The Monthlies. Passing from the reviews to the month- 
lies, we find the range and number of these far greater, 
and the matter lighter. The first great representative of the 
modern series, and one that has kept its issue up to the pres- 
ent day, is Cave's Gentleman' s Magazine, which commenced 
its career in 1831, and has been continued, after Cave's death, 
by Henry & Nichols, who wrote under the pseudonym of 
SylvaniLS Urban. It is a strong link between past and pres- 
ent. Johnson sent his queries to it while preparing his dic- 
tionary, and at the present day it is the favorite vehicle of 
antiquarians and historians. Passing by others, we find Black- 
wood's Edinburgh Magazine, first published in 181 7. Origi- 
nally a strong and bitter conservative, it kept up its popularity 
by its fine stories and poems. Among the most notable 
papers in Blackwood are the Nodes AiJibrosiancE, in which 
Professor Wilson, under the pseudonym of Christopher North, 
took the greater part. 

Most of the magazines had little or no political proclivity, 
but were chiefly literary. Among them are Eraser' s, begun in 
1830, and the Dublin University, in 1832. 

A charming light literature was presented by the New 
Monthly : in politics it was a sort of set-off to Blackwood : in 
It Captain Marryat wrote his famous sea stories ; and 
among other contributors are the ever welcome names of 
Hood, Lytton, and Campbell. The Penny Magazine, of 
Knight, was issued from 1832 to 1845. 

Quite a new era dawned upon the magazine world in the 
establishment of several new ones, under the auspices of fa- 



ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 48I 

mous authors ; among which we mention The Cornhill, edited 
by Thackeray, in 1859, with unprecedented success, until his 
tender heart compelled him to resign it j Temple Bar, by 
Sala, in i860, is also very successful. 

In 1850 Dickens began the issue of Household Words, and 
in 1859 this was merged into All the Year Roii7td, which 
owed its great popularity to the prestige of the same great 
writer. 

Besides these, devoted to literature and criticism, there are 
also many monthlies issued in behalf of special branches of 
knowledge, art, and science, which we have not space to 
refer to. 

Descending in the order mentioned, we come to the week- 
lies, which, besides containing summaries of daily intelligence, 
also share the magazine field in brief descriptive articles, 
short stories, and occasional poems. 

A number of these are illustrated journals, and are of great 
value in giving us pictorial representations of the great events 
and scenes as they pass, with portraits of men who have be- 
come suddenly famous by some special act or appointment. 
Their value cannot be too highly appreciated ; they supply to 
the mind, through the eye, what the best descriptions in letter- 
press could not give ; and in them satire uses comic elements 
with wonderful effect. Among the illustrated weeklies, the 
Illustrated London News has long held a high place j and 
within a short period The Graphic has exhibited splendid 
pictures of men and things of timely interest. Nor must we 
forget to mention Punch, which has been the grand jester of 
the realm since its origin. The best humorous and witty 
talent of England has found a vent in its pages, and some- 
times its pathos has been productive of reform. Thackeray, 
Cuthbert Bede, Mark Lemon, Hood, have amused us in its 
pages, and the clever pencil of Leech has made a series of 
etching which will never grow tiresome. To it Thackeray 
41 2 F 



482 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

contributed his Snob Papers, and Hood The Song of the 
Shirt. 

The Dailies. — But the great characteristic of the age is 
the daily newspaper, so common a blessing that we cease to . 
marvel at it, and yet marvellous as it is common. It is the 
product of quick intelligence, of great energy, of concurrent 
and systematized labor, and, in order to fulfil its mission, it 
seems to subsidize all arts and invade all subjects — steam, 
mechanics, photography, phonography, and electricity. The 
news which it prints and scatters comes to it on the tele- 
graph; long orations are phonographically reported; the very 
latest mechanical skill is used in its printing ; and the world 
is laid at our feet as we sit at the breakfast-table and read its 
columns. 

I shall not go back to the origin of printing, to show the 
great progress that has been made in the art from that time to 
the present ; nor shall I attempts to explain the present pro- 
cess, which one visit to a press-room would do far better than 
any description ; but I simply refer to the fact that fifty years 
ago newspapers were still printed with the hand-press, giving 
250 impressions per hour — no cylinder, no flying Hoe, (that 
was patented only in 1847.) Now, the ten-cylinder Hoe, 
steam driven, works off 20,000 sheets in an hour, and more, 
as the stereotyper may multiply the forms. What an emblem 
of art-progress is this ! Fifty years ago mail-coaches carried 
them away. Now, steamers and locomotives fly with them all 
over the world, and only enlarge and expand the story, the 
great facts of which have been already sent in outline by 
telegraph. 

Nor is it possible to overrate the value of a good daily 
paper : as the body is strengthened by daily food, so are we 
built up mentally and spiritually for the busy age in which we 
live by the world of intelligence contained in the daily jour- 
nal. A great book and a good one is offered for the read- 



ENGLISH JOURNALISM. 



483 



ing of many who have no time to read others, and a great 
culture in morals, religion, politics, is thus induced. Of 
course it would be impossible to mention all the English 
dailies. Among them The London Times is pre-eminent, 
and stands highest in the opinion of the ministerial party, 
which fears and uses it. 

There was a time when the press was greatly trammelled in 
England, and license of expression was easily charged with 
constructive treason ; but at present it is remarkably free, and 
the great, the government, and existing abuses, receive no 
soft treatment at its hands. 

The London Times was started by John Walter, a printer, 
in 1788, there having been for three years before a paper called 
the London Daily Universal Register. In 1803 his son, John, 
went into partnership, when the circulation was but 1,000. 
Within ten years it was 5,000. In 18 14, cleverly concealing 
the purpose from his workmen, he printed the first sheet 
ever printed by steam, on Koenig's press. The paper passed, 
at his death, into the hands of his son, the third John, who 
is a scholar, educated at Eton and Oxford, like his father 
a member of Parliament, and who has lately been raised to 
the peerage. The Times is so influential that it may well be 
called a third estate in the realm : its writers are men of merit 
and distinction ; its correspondence secures the best foreign 
intelligence; and its travelling agents, like Russell and others, 
are the true historians of a war. English journalism, it is 
manifest, is eminently historical. The files of English news- 
papers are the best history of the period, and will, by their 
facts and comments, hereafter confront specious and false his- 
torians. Another thing to be observed is the impersonality 
of the British press, not only in the fact that names are with- 
held, but that the articles betray no authorship ; that, in 
short, the paper does not appear as the glorification of one 
man or set of men, but like an unprejudiced relator, censor, 
and judge. 



484 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Of the principal London papers, the Morning Post (Libe- 
ral, but not Radical,) was begun in 1772. The Globe (at 
first Liberal, but within a short time Tory), in 1802. The 
iS/^^^f^r^ (Conservative), in 1827. The Daily News (high- 
class Liberal), in 1846. The News announced itself as 
pledged to Principles of Progress and Improvement. The 
Daily Telegraph was started in 1855, and claims the largest 
circulation. It is also a Liberal paper. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



Addison, Joseph, 258. 

Akenside, Mark, 351. 

Alcuin, 40. 

Aldhelm, Abbot, 40. 

Alfred the Great, 42. 

Alfric, surnamed Germanicus, 40. 

Alison, Sir Archibald, 447. 

Alured of Rievaux, 49. 

Arbuthnot, John, 252. 

Arnold, Matthew, 438. 

Arnold, Thomas, 448. 

Ascham, Roger, 103. 

Ashmole, Elias, 232. 

Aubrey, John, 232. 

Austen, Jane, 411. 

Bacon, Francis, 156. 

Bacon, Roger, 59. 

Bailey, Philip James, 437. 

Baillie, Joanna, 368. 

Barbauld, Anne Letitia, 359. 

Barbour, John, 89. 

Barclay, Robert, 228. 

Barham, Richard Harris, 437. 

Barklay, Alexander, 102. 

Barrow, Isaac, 230. 

Baxter, Richard, 226. 

Beattie, James, 356. 

Beaumont, Francis, 154. 

Beckford, William, 412. 

Bede the Venerable, 37. 

Benoit, 52. 

Berkeley, George, 278. 

Blair, Hugh, 369. 

Blind Harry, 89. 

Bolingbroke, Viscount, (Henry St. 

John,) 278. 
Boswell, James, 321. 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 225. 

41* 



Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 432. 
Browning, Robert, 434. 
Buchanan, George, 126. 
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 447. 
Bulwer, Edward George Earle Lyt- 

ton, 450. 
Bunyan, John, 228. 
Burke, Edmund, 369. 
Burnet, Gilbert, 231. 
Burney, Frances, 368. 
Burns, Robert, 397. 
Burton, Robert, 125. 
Butler, Samuel, 198. 
Byron, Rt. Hon. George Gordon, 

384. 

Caedmon, 34. 
Cambrensis, Giraldus, 49. 
Camden, William, 126. 
Campbell, Thomas, 401. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 444. 
CaveTidis.h, George, 102. 
Caxton, William, 92. 
Chapman, George, r27. 
Chatterton, Thomas, 340. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 60. 
Chillingworth, William, 222. 
Coleridge, Hartley, 427. 
Coleridge, Henry Nelson, 427. 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 424. 
Collier, John Payne, 153. 
Collins, William, 357. 
Colman, George, 366. 
Colman, George, (The Younger,) 

366. 
Congreve, William, 236. 
Cornwall, Barry, 436. 
Colton, Charles, 205. 
Coverdale, Miles, 170. 

485 



486 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



Cowley, Abraham, 195. 
Cowper, William, 353. 
Crabbe, George, 400. 
Cumberland, Richard, 363. 
Cunningham, Allan, 412. 

Daniel, Samuel, 127. 
Davenant, Sir William, 205. 
Davies, Sir John, 127. 
Defoe, Daniel, 282. 
Dekker, Thomas, 154. 
De Quincey, Thomas, 468. 
Dickens, Charles, 452. 
Dixon, William Hepworth, 449. 
Donne, John, 127, 
Drayton, Michael, 127. 
Dryden, John, 207. 
Dunbar, William, 90. 
Dunstan, (called Saint,) 41. 

Eadmer, 49. 

Edgeworth, Maria, 410. 
Erigena, John Scotus, 40. 
Etherege, Sir George, 238. 
Evelyn, John, 231. 

Falconer, William, 357. 
Farquhar, George, 238. 
Ferrier, Mary, 411. 
Fielding, Henry, 288, 
Fisher, John, 102. 
Florence of Worcester, 49. 
Foote, Samuel, 363. 
Ford, John, 154. 
Fox, George, 226. 
Froissart, Sire Jean, 58. 
Froude, James Anthony, 448. 
Fuller, Thomas, 224. 

Gaimar, Geoffrey, 52. 
Garrick, David, 361. 
Gay, John, 252. 
Geoffrey, 52. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 48. 
Gibbon, Edward, 317. 
Gillies, John, 441. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 301. 
Gowen, John, 86. 
Gray, Thomas, 351. 
Greene, Robert, 136. 
Greville, Sir Fulke, 127. 



Grostete, Robert, 59. 
Grote, George, 440. 

Hakluyt, Richard, 126. 

Hall, Joseph, 221. 

Hallam, Henry, 448. 

Harvey, Gabriel, no. 

Heber, Reginald, 436. 

Hemans, Mrs. Felicia Dorothea, 

409. 
Henry of Huntingdon, 49. 
Hennyson, Robert, 90. 
Herbert, George, 203. 
Herrick, Robert, 204. 
Hey wood, John, 131. 
Higden, Ralph, 50, ^ 

Hobbes, Thomas, 125. 
Hogg, James, 412. 
Hollinshed, Raphael, 126. 
Hood, Thomas, 467. 
Hooker, Richard, 125. 
Hope, Thomas, 412. 
Hume, David, 31 1. 
Hunt, Leigh, 411. 
Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 

205. 

Ingelow, Jean, 437. 

Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, 49. 

Ireland, Samuel, 153. 

James I., Cof Scotland,) 89. 
Johnson, Doctor Samuel, 324. . 
Jonson, Ben, 153. 
Junius, 331. 

Keats, John, 407. 

Keble, John, 437. 

Knowles, James Sheridan, 436. 

Kyd, Thomas, 136. 

Lamb, Charles, 466. 

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, 410. 

Langland, 56, 

Latimer, Hugh, 102. 

Layamon, 53. 

Lee, Nathaniel, 240. 

Leland, John, 102. 

Lingard, John, 446. 

Locke, John, 231. 

Lodge, Thomas, 135. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



487 



Luc de la Barre, 52. 
Lydgate, John, 90. 
Lyly, John, 136. 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 441. 

Mackay, Charles, 437. 

Mackenzie, Henry, 307, 

Macpherson, Doctor James, 336. 

Mahon, Lord, 447. 

Mandevil, Sir John, 58. 

Manning, Robeit, 59. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 134. 

Marston, John, 136. 

Massinger, 154. 

Matthew of Westminster, 49. 

Mestre, Thomas, 32. 

Milton, John, 174. 

Mitford, William, 444. 

Moore, Thomas, 390. 

More, Hannah, 367. 

More, Sir Thomas, 99. 

Napier, Sir William Francis Patrick, 

447. 
Nash, Thomas, 136. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 278. 
Norton, Mrs. Caroline Elizabeth, 

410. 

Occleve, Thomas, 89. 
Ormulum, 54. 
Otway, Thomas, 239. 

Paley, William, 370. 

Paris, Matthew, 49. 

Parnell, Thomas, 252. 

Pecock, Reginald, 102. 

Peele, George, 136. 

Penn, William, 227. 

Pepys, Samuel, 232. 

Percy, Dr. Thomas, (Bishop,) 358. 

Philip de Than, 52. 

Pollok, Robert, 411. 

Pope, Alexander, 241. 

Prior, Matthew, 251. 

Purchas, Samuel, 126. 

Quarles, Francis, 203. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 126. 
Richard L, (Coeur de Lion,) 52. 



Richardson, Samuel, 285. 
Robert of Gloucester, 55. 
Robertson, William, 315. 
Roger de Hovedin, 49, 
Rogers, Samuel, 403. 
Roscoe, William, 413. 
Rowe, Nicholas, 240. 

Sackville, Thomas, 127. 

Scott, Sir Michael, 59. 

Scott, Walter, 371. 

Shakspeare, William, 137. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 405. 

Shenstone, William, 357, 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 364. 

Sherlock, William, 230. 

Shirley, 154. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 107. 

Skelton, John, 95. 

Smollett, Tobias George, 292. 

South, Robert, 230. 

Southern, Thomas, 240. 

Southey, Robert, 421. 

Spencer, Edmund, 104. 

Steele, Sir Richard, 264. 

Sterne, Lawrence, 296. 

Still, John, 132. 

Stillingfleet, Edward, 230. 

Stow, John, 126. 

Strickland, Agnes, 447. 

Suckling, Sir John, 204. 

Surrey, Earl of, 98. 

Swift, Jonathan, 268. 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 437» 

Tailor, Robert, 136. 
Taylor, Jeremy, 223. 
Temple, Sir William, 277. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 428. 
Thackeray, Anne E., 465. 
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 

459. 
Thirlwall, Connop, 441. 
Thomas of Ercildoun, 59. 
Thomson, James, 347. 
Tickell, Thomas, 252. 
Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 437, 
Turner, Sharon, 448. 
Tusser, Thomas, 102. 
Tyndale, William, 169. 
Tytler, Patrick Frazer, 446. 



488 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



Udall, Nicholas, 132. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 237. 
Vaughan, Henry, 205. 
Vitalis, Ordericus, 49. 

Wace, Richard, 51. 
Waller, Edmund, 204. 
Walpole, Horace, 321. 
Walton, Izaak, 202. 
Warton, Joseph, 368. 
Warton, Thomas, 368. 
Watts, Isaac, 252. 



Webster, 154, 
White, Henry Kirke, 358. 
Wiclif, John, 77. 
W^illiam of Jumieges, 49. 
William of Malmsbury, 47. 
William of Poictiers, 49. 
Wither, George, 203. 
Wolcot, John, 367. 
Wordsworth, William, 415. 
W^yat, Sir Thomas, 97. 
Wycherley, William, 235. 

Young, Edward, 253. 




THE END. 



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